The HARDWARE Short Questions That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The HARDWARE Short Questions That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread

Cidrick: Jun 10, 2001; Praise the siamese

Null1fy posted:

I am assuming I will be able to plug in the video cable from my Wii into the monitor and then run an extension cable from the Wii to my sound card on my computer for it to work.

Yes, you can use an ordinary composite or S-Video connection to plug your Wii into the 2007WFP just fine. Although, I imagine the Wii will come with RCA stereo outputs and most sound cards will only accept a stereo-mini auxilary input. You'll want to get an adapter that will convert the two.

Xanar posted:

Is there a problem with my hard drive or is it driver related? I've heared a lot of complaints about nforce 4 so that might be the root of my problem.

Repost this in the HOTS subforum, but include a bit more info such as what you mean by "Never got past the screen." Did it freeze? End at a black screen? Did the hard drive light stay on? All that jazz.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2006 20:18

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 09:06

Cidrick: Jun 10, 2001; Praise the siamese

FirstPlayer posted:

I have a problem with (I think) my video card. My left monitor (SyncMaster 204T, DVI) looks like this:

No, that's definitely a video card problem, and overheating usually causes artifacts and tearing and whatnot. This looks like bad video RAM or a cracked core or something.

What happens if you change resolutions?

# ¿ Sep 27, 2007 16:03

Cidrick: Jun 10, 2001; Praise the siamese

ThrillKiller posted:

Is there a way to extend the length of my ethernet cable without just buying a longer cable?

Get a Cat5 coupler and you can just join two ethernet cables together.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2007 20:00

Cidrick: Jun 10, 2001; Praise the siamese

DowJones posted:

I've got a short question. I'm looking for a new video card, ATI or NVIDIA, does not matter. Price range $100-150$. My primary purpose for it is to run games, rather than high definition media. Can anyone recommend a good older model card to me?

I hope I'm asking in the right place.

AGP or PCIe? If you have PCIe then take a look at the second post in the stickied parts thread, there's a couple that will fit your bill.

KageKouen posted:

I need to buy a roll of Cat5/5e/6 cable in a spool of about 1000feet. I figure to future proof it I might as well go Cat6, but im more concerned with keeping the price low than anything else. I'd also like to pick up a crimper and some heads in that same set if possible, but its not mandatory. Anyone know where I can pick up a cable spool on the cheap?

$115 will get you 1000 feet or Cat6. Then just pick up a crimper and a couple hundred connectors and then you're good to go.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2007 22:24

Cidrick: Jun 10, 2001; Praise the siamese

MC Fruit Stripe posted:

To celebrate my greatness, I'm going to buy myself a new mobo/cpu this weekend. An Asus/Intel combination to replace a Gigabyte/Athlon combination. Is there anything I can do to keep from rebuilding the computer, or is Windows XP's hardware freakout an inevitable conclusion?

http://shsc.info/MovingWindowsToNewHardware

# ¿ Feb 23, 2008 00:09

Cidrick: Jun 10, 2001; Praise the siamese

Gorilla Salsa posted:

I have some questions about RAID 1. Let's say we have Drive A and Drive B. If Drive A fails, how do you get back up? Do you just Unplug Drive A? When you replace Drive A, how hard is it to rebuild the RAID array? Is a reinstall necessary? Does it select automatically? How do you know if a drive fails? Also, Is it wiser to buy two same capacity drives from the same company at different times, or from different companies at the same time, or a combination of the two?

It depends on the RAID controller, but in general:

If a drive fails, the operating system should continue as if nothing happened. With a good RAID controller you can physically yank out a drive and it will be completely transparent to the OS. With Software RAID1 it should do the same thing, almost.
To completely get back up and running with full redundancy, just replace the drive with something of the same size or greater. The array should automatically rebuild over time. Again, how long this takes or how well it works depends on the RAID controller. You may have to manually initiate the rebuild if you're using software RAID1 or a lovely onboard RAID controller (I'm looking at you, Silicon Image)
A reinstall should never be necessary.
You'll know if you have monitoring set up. In Windows Software RAID1 it will usually log something to the event log. If you have a server-grade RAID controller like Dell PERC or HP SmartArray, LED indicators will tell you if a drive goes bad. Otherwise usually the only way to find out is if you have proper monitoring software set up, or you reboot and then the RAID controller beeps and says something about the logical drive being in a degraded state.
Statistically, what drives you use don't matter. Everything will fail at some point. Some will fail in a year, some won't fail for twenty.

Hope that all made sense. RAID1 is awesome as long as you have a good controller.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2008 19:05

Cidrick: Jun 10, 2001; Praise the siamese

thrawn527 posted:

The computer I've got (HP) has an nVidia card on the motherboard, and it's not as good as the one in the computer I had before (Dell), which is an ATI Radeon X600. I've still got the old graphics card (the computer died, but the graphics card should still be fine). My question is, can I just install the older graphics card into the new computer, even though they're different brands?

Yeah, as long as they use the same interface (i.e. both are AGP, or PCI-express), you can swap it in without any problems. Just make sure you install the right drivers for it once you slap it in.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2008 15:03

Cidrick: Jun 10, 2001; Praise the siamese

simcole posted:

I want to take my touchscreen pc (jukebox in a closet) and run a monitor cable 20' to my pc-ready tv. I want to be able to see the music video's & visualizations on my tv. Does such a cable exist? how far can I expect a cable to work? Should I just do it another way?

Define PC-Ready. Some TVs will have an ordinary analog VGA input that you can just hook it up to.

What sort of outputs does the touchscreen PC have? If it has a DVI-out and your TV has an HDMI port, you can buy an HDMI to DVI cable to run it to the TV, then you'd just use the touchscreen PC to switch to whatever input it's on.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2008 14:59

Cidrick: Jun 10, 2001; Praise the siamese

Emo Businessman posted:

Question 1: I can only get one front panel USB port to work, the right one. There are two yellow slots marked "USB" on my motherboard, and currently only one of them has a cable in it, which goes to the front panel. Is there another front panel USB cable hidden away that I'm too blind to see, or is it par for course for two USB ports to be on one cable and something else is amiss?

No, any USB header on your motherboard should work, and I've never seen any case that's required more than one USB connector to power both front USB ports. I'd check the front panel to see if maybe a pin came loose on the second port.

Emo Businessman posted:

Question 2: The place where the power light goes on the motherboard is two 'ticks' wide. The power light cable coming from the case that I have to plug into it is three 'ticks' wide. I guess they didn't want me to plug in the power light or something? It's not like I need it, but it bugs me.

I just looked up the manual for your motherboard, and like mine (I have an EP35-DS3L) there's a separate header on your motherboard for the power connector. Check out section 9 on the internal connections chapter in the manual, it should be a header right next to where you have the rest of your LEDs hooked up.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2008 15:08

Cidrick: Jun 10, 2001; Praise the siamese

memtest86+ is quite a bit faster, so I'd prefer using that if it's available. It's since replaced regular memtest86 but many old diagnostic CDs will still only have the old memtest86.

# ¿ Aug 29, 2008 19:57

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 09:06

Cidrick: Jun 10, 2001; Praise the siamese

frowning posted:

If were to post a graphics card in a strong box, but only wrapped the card itself in bubblewrap would there be a chance of loving up the card without using one of those antistatic bags they usually come in? I'm having a bit off trouble laying my hands on one of them.

Very slight chance. I wouldn't worry too much.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2008 14:51

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The HARDWARE Short Questions That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread