Quick [tech] Questions Thread

[caladein]

I picked up this switch to add some more ports down at another part of the house.

From what I understand of switches and Auto-MDIX: I can just run straight cables from my router and other devices into it and it should all "work".  Right?

[Salamok]

I picked up this switch to add some more ports down at another part of the house.

From what I understand of switches and Auto-MDIX: I can just run straight cables from my router and other devices into it and it should all "work".  Right?

Well if it doesn't you could just clip the end of the cable and manually unflip it as you put a new end on it, but yes it should work.

[Chimpy]

I picked up this switch to add some more ports down at another part of the house.

From what I understand of switches and Auto-MDIX: I can just run straight cables from my router and other devices into it and it should all "work".  Right?

Yes. Auto-MDIX should allow any device to connect with either a straight or crossover.

Few if any devices used for home and small office networking these days require a crossover. Even most enterprise switches have auto-MDIX for switch to switch connections.

[Fraeg]

Power Supply/Booting question

windows xp pro
amd 64 2.2 duo
uhmm not at home forget power supply not generic but not 

recently when I shutdown my computer a error message flickers on the screen just before it shuts off.  It is there for just fractions of a second, too fast for me to actually read it.   The result is when I go to turn on my computer by simply pressing the *on* button nothing happens.   I have to turn the power supply off and unplug, replug and turn power supply back on.  Generally this works the first time.  Sometimes I basically have to flip the power supply on and off while hitting the start button.

If not for the error message I would assume that it is a bad power supply... but not sure. 

Penny for your thoughts?

[Trippy]

If you turn on the machine, wait for Winodows to finish booting, and then immediately shutdown, do you get the message/have turning it back on?

[Fraeg]

hmm if i do a restart it restarts fine

if I boot it up and then shut it down before windows loads I get the problem with having to turn power on and off (had to do that several times just to boot it this morning)

will try what you mention next.

*edit*

If you turn on the machine, wait for Winodows to finish booting, and then immediately shutdown, do you get the message/have turning it back on?

I have done this twice each time it flashes the error message too fast for me to read and then, although I clicked shutdown, it restarts  

*edit 2* make that three times, after posting the first edit I shutdown and it behaves as if I hit restart

[Trippy]

If you restart the machine and then power off manually (e.g. holding in the power button) when Windows finishes shutting down (i.e. when your screen goes blank and the power on startup screen starts to appear), can you power the machine back on without doing the power supply dance?

[Fraeg]

If you restart the machine and then power off manually (e.g. holding in the power button) when Windows finishes shutting down (i.e. when your screen goes blank and the power on startup screen starts to appear), can you power the machine back on without doing the power supply dance?

it still reboots, tried it several times.  Shutdown, manual (hold power button) whatever, it shuts down for a few seconds then boots up again.  Currently short of pulling the plug I am unable to turn off my PC, which is an interesting twist from being unable to turn it on  

I am wondering if I simply have a wiring/connection issue with the Antec tower itself?  Leave money under my pillow for the PC Fairy?


*edit 2/16/10*  It was the power supply, which is the first one I have ever had fail on me.  I always thought when they failed it was *snap* gone/toast, and you hope it didn't fry stuff.  In conjunction with the power supply Samsung's "magictune" program was causing the shutdown issues. 

Thanks all for the feedback.

[Yegolev]

Did you look to see if anything is in the event log?

[Trippy]

If you restart the machine and then power off manually (e.g. holding in the power button) when Windows finishes shutting down (i.e. when your screen goes blank and the power on startup screen starts to appear), can you power the machine back on without doing the power supply dance?

it still reboots, tried it several times.  Shutdown, manual (hold power button) whatever, it shuts down for a few seconds then boots up again.  Currently short of pulling the plug I am unable to turn off my PC, which is an interesting twist from being unable to turn it on  

I am wondering if I simply have a wiring/connection issue with the Antec tower itself?  Leave money under my pillow for the PC Fairy?

Did your machine somehow get set to reboot on a BSoD?

[SnakeCharmer]

Any recommendations for video conferencing software that allows side by side video and recording of said video?

[Viin]

What's side-by-side video? Is that what you call showing a video and a slideshow at the same time? Or two different screens at once?

[SnakeCharmer]

What's side-by-side video? Is that what you call showing a video and a slideshow at the same time? Or two different screens at once?

Not sure if I can describe it...

Rather than the person's videofeed I'm viewing being the large video, and mine being the smaller one inside or or somewhere off to the side, I'd rather have our two video feeds side by side and equal size.  And I'd like to be able to record the video as well.

Does that make sense?

Here's a crappy paint drawing

[Viin]

I don't think you'll find an all-in-one, but there are a few options:

http://www.ecamm.com/mac/callrecorder/ (Mac-based Skype video chat recorder, does side-by-side)
http://www.ivisit.com/products_presenter (might be able to do side-by-side, not sure)
http://www.camfrog.com/ (might be able to do side-by-side video)

You'd need to use a recorder with the last two, and Skype with the first.

http://www.oovoo.com/HowToooVooItem.aspx?pname=HowToooVooVideoCalling (allows 1-on-1 video and 1minute recording for free, paid option too)


Blog about this here:
http://www.djchuang.com/2009/how-to-stream-and-record-video-chat-interview/

[SnakeCharmer]

Good stuff, man.  Thanks.

[Yegolev]

Crossfire question.  Accepting the inevitability of using ATi graphics cards, I noticed that I can put three cards into a Crossfire setup on a ASUS P6T Deluxe.  Having not researched SLI or Crossfire much, seems I can get two cards on x16/x16 or three cards on x16/x8/x8.  Pros/cons?

[Engels]

I'm no expert, but I think it depends on what you hope to use all this for. One monitor or three?

[Yegolev]

One monitor.  The idea of trying to have The Sims 3 run on multiple monitors causes me to shake a bit.

[Engels]

What size? Because I think that you could probably just get a single 5870, even for a fairly large monitor (1920x1200), and it'll handle just about anything you can throw at it. Or are you trying to future proof?

[Strazos]

Hmmm, my Windows 7 Beta just had a pop-up telling me to back shit up and get a retail version...I thought it was good for a year after release?

[Trippy]

Hmmm, my Windows 7 Beta just had a pop-up telling me to back shit up and get a retail version...I thought it was good for a year after release?

Technically it doesn't expire until June but starting March 1 it's going to shut down on you every 2 hours. Just because.

[Fraeg]

are you shitting us? it will really shutdown every two hours? What a great way to get return beta testers next go around 

[Trippy]

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Microsoft-Windows-OS-Release-Candidate,9564.html

[Viin]

are you shitting us? it will really shutdown every two hours? What a great way to get return beta testers next go around  

That doesn't seem *that* catastrophic. After all, the program has been released for retail (quite awhile ago I might add). How long do you expect a beta version to run? Forever? Then why would anyone ever buy it?

[Strazos]

So I guess Win7 Ultimate OEM would be the equivalent release version?

[Yegolev]

What size? Because I think that you could probably just get a single 5870, even for a fairly large monitor (1920x1200), and it'll handle just about anything you can throw at it. Or are you trying to future proof?

You'd think that, but I would have thought a HD 4870 would have done the same at 1680x1050 or less.  Now I am going to attempt to compensate for bad programming by putting a shit-ton of video cards in a computer.

Here's what I don't know: do I lose anything with a non-primary video card in a x8 slot?  How much data does it pump through the PCIE slot compared to across the Crossfire cable?  Might there be a bottleneck if I don't go x16?  Because I am probably about to put three 5850s in my wife's PC.  Yeah, I'm at least not going to do this with 5970s.

[Trippy]

What size? Because I think that you could probably just get a single 5870, even for a fairly large monitor (1920x1200), and it'll handle just about anything you can throw at it. Or are you trying to future proof?

You'd think that, but I would have thought a HD 4870 would have done the same at 1680x1050 or less.  Now I am going to attempt to compensate for bad programming by putting a shit-ton of video cards in a computer.

Here's what I don't know: do I lose anything with a non-primary video card in a x8 slot?  How much data does it pump through the PCIE slot compared to across the Crossfire cable?  Might there be a bottleneck if I don't go x16?  Because I am probably about to put three 5850s in my wife's PC.  Yeah, I'm at least not going to do this with 5970s.

Yes there's potentially a bottleneck at x8. Does it actually matter in practice? Hard to say.

[schild]

Isn't your wife just playing the sims? What the fuck does she need more than an 8800GT for?

[Salamok]

Isn't your wife just playing the sims? What the fuck does she need more than an 8800GT for?

Sounds like Yegolev is trying to brute force himself out of a fucked up situation or something.  He needs to just bite the bullet and pop in a spare test drive and try a fresh install of w7 on a newly formatted drive, install sims 3 as the 1st app and see if it truly has any of these phantom issues that apparently can only be addressed by triple SLI video cards and bandwidth in excess of of an x8 slot.

[Yegolev]

Isn't your wife just playing the sims? What the fuck does she need more than an 8800GT for?

Please see the Windows Performance Tuning thread.  Also: idk ? rofl  I think that it is an overabundance of textures, myself, coupled with shitty programming since EA knows that The Sims: Maggoty Turd would sell in the millions.  The advice you get on Sims forums almost always involves turning down video options, against which I rail.  So, it doesn't matter that her machines makes LoTRO look better than mine or that Dawn of Discovery runs like butter down the back of a whore if she can't play the game that this machine was ostensibly built to run.

Sounds like Yegolev is trying to brute force himself out of a fucked up situation or something.  He needs to just bite the bullet and pop in a spare test drive and try a fresh install of w7 on a newly formatted drive, install sims 3 as the 1st app and see if it truly has any of these phantom issues that apparently can only be addressed by triple SLI video cards and bandwidth in excess of of an x8 slot.

Correct.  Sensible approaches fail in the face of crazy women.  Although I think I can install TS3 on my own machine and see how that goes.  My rig is of lesser power and may shed some light... or not.  I wish I had time to do this the proper way but I have been working a lot lately.

Anyway, why should I NOT put three video cards in it?

[Engels]

See if it runs better on your less powerful machine, then give it to her, fer cryin' out loud :P You take the more powerful one.

[Bunk]

Interesting tidbit about Sims 3:

If you are using custom content not supplied directly by EA, be careful about what ends up inside your \mods\packages folder. It turns out that the extension used for Sims 3 mods is the exact same as the extension for Sims 2 mods. If you inadvertantly put a Sims 2 mod in the Sims 3 mod directory, you will get some very interesting behaviour. The game will attempt to open the Sims 2 mod over and over and over again. A check with Process Monitor showed the Sims3 app attempting to open the same mod file over 100,000 times in about a two minute data capture.

Needless to say, this had a detrimental effect on game performance.

[Yegolev]

Another interesting thing about TS3 is how it manages to find things on its own, so that is something to consider.  There's a lot more opacity in TS3 than in TS2, from what I have found so far, and I spent a while trying to understand where things are kept and how it found things I thought it should not know about.  Also the net connectivity is another variable.  I don't believe this TS2 content nugget is relevant unless one of the custom content items is really a TS2 one and she thought it was a TS3 item when she downloaded it.

See if it runs better on your less powerful machine, then give it to her, fer cryin' out loud :P You take the more powerful one.

Logistically frightening but strategically appealing.

[Yegolev]

I mentioned Bunk's idea to my wife and she moved the contents of the mods folder somewhere, saying "it's only 1.3 gigabytes".  Performance picked up greatly so I told her now she has to start one of the metagames of The Sims where you try to figure out which mod dicks over your game.  And then the PSU exploded.

[Lantyssa]

It might just be the game trying to access 1.3 gigabytes of data...