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Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

HalloKitty posted:

Yes, you can use 3, but only if one of those is DisplayPort (I assume it also has DisplayPort).

DVI/HDMI, you can only choose two of those 3.

If you don't have any screens with DisplayPort, and you still want to run three monitors, get yourself a DisplayPort to DVI adapter.

Make sure it's an active one, too. There are lots of cables designed for laptops that use DP and miniDP which are just passive converters, but they depend on having a TMDS signal generator for DVI/HDMI signaling on the card end. That generation of AMD cards only had two TMDS signal generators, so passive cables won't work for a third display.

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Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

Ramadu posted:

Ok cool. Its a Crucial M4 drive so I got the parted magic thing. Another question, why does it have a 100mb part called "system Reserved" and why does it fill up after doing a quick format? What is it doing?

Windows keeps its bootloader, some basic recovery tools, and the Bitlocker framework in that partition.

It doesn't get wiped in a format because a format is a partition-level operation, and it's separate from the partition you're wiping.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

program666 posted:

Is there a speakers thread? My creative 5.1 setup is going caput, the bass box is not working most of the time, and I wanted to buy new speakers but I don't know how to go about it. I was thinking about going through all of the trouble of drilling my wall and installing all the speakers of a 5.1 set up (currently the speakers are just on top of whatever surface I have on my room) since I play a lot of games and the spacial awareness would be cool but I'm not sure if this has such great benefits.

It's in Inspect Your Gadgets.

If you want spatial awareness in games, headphones are a better option than 5.1. Multi-speaker positional audio is designed so that a room full of people can get positional audio from six (or whatever number) speakers. Headphones can be far more precise, because with two speakers per listener and near-perfect isolation between them, they can control exactly what each ear hears. If a game goes to the trouble of establishing good positional audio cues, it'll almost certainly be set up to perform best with headphones.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

Farchanter posted:

If this is the wrong thread I'm really sorry,.

I got an Intel Edison for Christmas, but I'm not really sure how to even get started with it. Is there a tutorial to learn about it from the ground up?

Thanks!

Intel has decent documentation.

Also, you'd probably have better luck in the DIY/hobbies forum. The Edison isn't exactly an Arduino, but it's close enough in intended purpose that you can probably find some help in the Arduino thread. And there's the basic electronics thread, which is a bit more low-level than tiny computers but will probably come in handy if you want to use all that connectivity Intel packed in there.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

Nemesis Of Moles posted:

I figure the second disk is screwed, but does the first look ok?

It looks OK, but failures don't always give you a nice SMART warning beforehand. It's always smart to back up any data you care about.

If you're seeing random shutdowns, that's probably not a hard drive thing, either. There could be multiple problems, or the Seagate might not be the root cause of the issue.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.
Raidmax power supplies are garbage, and running a hot video card like a 280X on one is asking for trouble. It may or may not be the source of your problem, but it'd be a good idea to shop for a replacement no matter what. Remember, anybody can print a sticker that has a big wattage number on it, and there are a lot of bottom-feeders in the PSU market that count on the fact that most people won't ever load the unit to anywhere near its rated specs.

If it's not your power supply, it's your motherboard.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

Tonetta posted:

I have no idea where this belongs but I imagine this is the closest place to where I wanna be - I'm looking for a microphone/headset combo that can go 7.1 for under $200. I found the razer tiamat already but I've heard that razer headsets are made poorly/suck etc. Any help is appreciated before i blow my money in about 3 hours.

Hope you haven't blown your money already.

Don't buy "multichannel" headsets. You only have two ears. 5.1/7.1/whatever audio is a hack to let a bunch of people in the same movie theater or living room get the same "hey, that sound is coming from behind me" experience, by putting speakers behind all of them.

If you're already wearing headphones, hooked up to a powerful computer that can do positional audio processing, then you'll get far better results by just putting one speaker over each ear and letting the computer do the rest of the work - you know, ordinary headphones. Jamming a bunch of unnecessary drivers in there isn't effective, because multichannel audio depends on the room you're in providing positional cues. Plus, it makes it harder to design and build acoustically good headphones, and drives up the cost of the final product (or, more likely, pushes the manufacturer to use the cheapest possible parts).

For $200, I'd probably go for these V-moda headphones with the boom mic accessory. They're built very well, sound great, and you can get big fluffy memory foam ear cushions. If you want to save some money, you can get the same boom mic and use it with Skullcandy Aviators.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

22 Eargesplitten posted:

My laser printer power cable is too short. I'm looking at getting a 3-5 foot extension. I see on home depot's website some of them have amperage ratings. Do I need to be concerned about that? I figured any cable that size would handle it.

Laser printers have very high peak power draws - they have to literally melt toner onto paper, and the startup current for the fuser is intense.

There should be a label on the printer with its maximum power draw listed. If you can, just get a longer power cord; if not, be sure to get a short, fat extension cable that can handle your printer's needs.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

plainswalker75 posted:

This is a really weird situation, but I'd appreciate any help. Due to some really stupid decisions in the ancient past, our in-house software is hardcoded to only use the HP LaserJet 4 driver and this won't be changed any time soon. One of our teams recently reorganized so that all of their members are now working remotely, from home offices etc. in the field ,but the printers they bought aren't compatible with that driver. Their current workaround is to print to a compatible printer at our main office, have someone scan that document and then email it to them as a PDF; aside from being a really stupid workflow, they are frequently dealing with sensitive information and/or client financial data, so we're looking for a better solution.

Are there any color HP MFPs that are compatible with the LaserJet 4 driver specifically (even for basic printing)? My idea would be to setup two printer objects, one using the universal print driver and one using the LaserJet 4 driver, that way they could have multifunction capabilities in general and also print from our software when necessary.

How does your software communicate with the print driver?

If it's specifically looking for a Laserjet 4 print driver in Windows, you're probably boned on the hardware front and will have to think about creating virtual network printers.

If it's just stuffing Laserjet 4 compatible print commands down the wire, you're in luck. Older Laserjets all speak a language called HP PCL (Printer Control Language); the LJ4 in particular uses PCL5e. Laserjets were so common for a long time that PCL has become a sort of informal standard, and PCL emulation still is still common across a wide range of business printers (even non-HP models). You might even be able to get away with finding a PCL driver for your current set of "incompatible" printers.

If that doesn't work out, the "set up a virtual printer over the network" option is probably going to be your best bet. There are also some Windows software packages out there that provide a virtual PCL printer and output to Postscript or PDF, but they tend to be just as hacky and poorly-supported as the free options.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

22 Eargesplitten posted:

My T430 stopped powering on, but I'm pretty sure I left it in sleep mode so the battery might have run out. I have a multimeter and want to test the knockoff power brick and see if that went bad before I look at getting a replacement motherboard, especially because replacing a motherboard in a laptop is like stabbing yourself in the dick for an hour. The thing is, the plug looks like this:


I only see one pin, so where would I touch to check for voltage?

The inside and outside of the barrel plug aren't connected to each other. Inside should be 20V DC, outside should be ground. The center pin has a specified resistance to ground, that the system uses to tell the power output of the adapter.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

Blowjob Overtime posted:

I should clarify that I'm in engineering and just want to avoid every employee here carrying their own adapter. This is a global mega-corp, so what you're describing (i.e., the proper way of actually solving the problem) with running a wire from the device to the hub on the conference room tables would take well over a month to complete and I don't even know how much paperwork to fill out. Buying a few adapters is something that I can do on my P-card today if what I described is available for purchase somewhere.

What you describe isn't easily available.

What you probably want is something like this: https://tetherties.com. Just buy commodity adapters and leash them to the main cable to make sure they don't walk off. If a user doesn't need the adapter they just unplug it and let it hang separate from the cable. They're expensive for what they are, but compared to some kind of custom reverse-splitter distribution system that auto selects the right input and is transparent to users, they cost effectively nothing.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

Watrick posted:

A friend of mine has Windows 7. He is looking to get a new scanner, but we're having problems having finding a standalone. He is cool with a printer combo, but regardless he wants one that has a very quick scan. I checked online, but was unable to find information about scanner speed. Does anyone have any recommendations with a budget of around 300?

What does he want to scan?

There are basically three categories of consumer/light-office scanner:
- Cheap flatbeds integrated into AIO printers. May or may not have a weaksauce document feeder or duplexing capability. Like the printer component in AIOs, they're for home users who might need to scan a form or something occasionally but aren't designed for regular heavy use
- Photography-oriented flatbeds. These are more niche than they used to be, because most people who just want "a scanner" get an AIO now. Comparatively slow but good image quality
- Office document scanners with sheet feed that work like printers in reverse. They're ADF-only, optimize speed over pixel-perfect quality, and move paper almost as fast as a printer

Assuming your friend wants the third type to quickly turn big piles of letter/legal/A4 size documents into PDFs, you could do a lot worse in your budget than the Brother ADS-2000e. The Fujitsu ScanSnap series are the gold standard in this space, but they typically run around $400-500 to start, so they might be a bit out of your price range.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

Lungboy posted:

Do modern motherboards ever come with ide sockets for old but still perfectly good hdds?

No, because "perfectly good" IDE drives are vanishingly rare. Magnetic hard drives are mechanical devices, and they wear out. Trusting your data to a drive old enough to start climbing the other end of the bathtub curve (which is any IDE drive, at this point) is not a good idea.

A USB-PATA adapter is a useful thing to keep around, so you can get data off those old drives, but actively using one for anything you care about will probably lead to heartbreak.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

22 Eargesplitten posted:

How bad is a "Hard Disk Error" message in pre-boot? My wife just got that this morning (and let me tell you, that woke me up very quickly). It booted up fine after that. My initial response is :supaburn: but I want to make sure I'm not overreacting. I've never had that happen to my computers, but I have had to fix computers that had that error. In that case it was replace the whole hard drive, but it was at the kind of enterprise where the time spent troubleshooting something like that cost more than a new pre-imaged hard drive.

Download Crystal Disk Info: https://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html

Make sure to get the standard edition in zip format (there's bundled crap in the exe installer, and the other "editions" are just anime skins).

If it says "good," you're probably OK, but back your poo poo up anyway. If it says anything other than "good," your hard drive is probably going to die soon, back your poo poo up now.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

Enourmo posted:

I'm building a new computer for my mom, moving her to an OS SSD/bulk storage HDD setup. I've got the clean Win7 install on the new computer, but I need to copy over all her old files still.

Don't do this.

Win7 was great, but it's been in extended support since 2015. In less than two years, Microsoft will be cutting off all updates. Especially if your mom's not savvy about technology, running an effectively unpatchable OS will put her at tremendous risk. If she's an accountant, it's putting her clients' personal information at risk, too.

If she has some of the very rare software that will work on Win7 but not Win10, get her set up with a VM.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

Saukkis posted:

Pretty much the only option that I've seen, beside USB-C Power Delivery, are some emergency portable starters for cars. For example TELWIN Drive 9000 which has 19V output for laptops. But you would still need to find a suitable cable. Or this unnamed Amazon model, which comes with several laptop power cord adapters.

You can also get a portable 110V power bank. They're big, heavy, and inefficient, and you have to carry your regular wall charger, but they're compatible with anything that connects to 110V AC.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.
Onboard audio is fine for almost everyone. If you have a desktop, just use the front panel input/output for headphones, and the back panel line out for your speakers.

If you just want a headphone output, and your system's onboard sound picks up bad interference or doesn't work for whatever reason, a random $10ish USB audio interface is usually fine. You don't want anything fancy, just cheap commodity hardware wired up to a USB plug and a couple of audio jacks, that's supported without external drivers in any modern OS.

USB headsets are that same $10 interface, pre-packaged into an ordinary analog headset, maybe with some extra sound processing added on. You can do better audio processing in software on your computer; it's built into Windows now. There's no harm in buying USB headphones, but there's not really much reason to, either.

If you want to drive fancy headphones, or are obsessed with mostly-inaudible sound quality differences, separate headphone amps are easy enough to find. This end of the market goes crazy - you can go down the rabbit hole of USB DACs, audiophile preamps, and high-power headphone amps, spending hundreds or thousands of dollars to hook your computer up to old Soviet vacuum tubes and deliberately inefficient amplifiers. Or you can spend $50-100 on a basic DAC/amp setup from Fiio or Schiit, or go trawl Reddit's headphone forums looking for their advice on the best ultra-cheap AliExpress options and rolling the dice.

If you want to record music and need low-latency monitoring, mic preamps, phantom power, and so on, then $100-200 can get you a basic recording interface like a Focusrite Scarlett. There's no reason for that unless you specifically want to record on fancier hardware than a basic desktop mic, though.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

Ramrod Hotshot posted:

Trying to install an RX 570 into an HP Z620 workstation.

The video card has a 6 pin slot. (circled red) I read about how RX 570s need an 8 pin for the purposes of providing enough power, but maybe that's not true for all of them?

The blue circle is around two six pin cables (male and female) plugged in to each other. One comes from the PSU, the other goes behind a panel to parts unknown. Maybe it's not even used, I don't know. Either way, it's about a foot from the card. I'm going to need an extension cable, or maybe a splitter like this to make sure everything's plugged in?

Just trying to confirm all of this so I don't blow up my video card immediately. There is basically no manual for this, and extensive googling has produced paltry answers at best.



One of the nice things about nicer workstations is that there's usually a service manual somewhere.

You're looking for a power cable labeled "G1." It's hard to tell from your picture, but if that power cable that's circled is labeled "P2" then it's your CPU power supply and shouldn't go to the graphics card.

Your power supply should be 800W, so it shouldn't have any issues with that video card and a single CPU even though it's on the old side.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

Statutory Ape posted:

The best dongle for xb1 controllers is the official MS one.

It's out of production, and anything you get from eBay or amazon sellers is a bad knockoff.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

teagone posted:

Powerline adapter viability is completely anecdotal. If a powerline adapter is on the same circuit of another appliance or device that consumes a lot of power — for example, like a treadmill or something — the powerline speeds will absolutely bottom out, making the internet/network completely unsuable. I know this because I lived in a condo for roughly 2 years where I had to use powerline adapters to thread ethernet since I wasn't really allowed to drill holes in the walls and whenever I or my roomate were using the treadmill, one set of powerline adapters would just poo poo themselves completely.

The problem isn't power consumption; it'd probably be just fine with a space heater or other high-powered resistive load. Treadmills are a worst-case scenario: they run a powerful motor, and typically use a cheap, simple DC motor drive that rectifies and chops the incoming AC waveform to get smooth-enough variable speed control for not too much money. This halfassed PWM creates all kinds of ugly harmonics and noise that will mess with something like a powerline networking signal.

It's usually possible to reduce the impact of noisy appliances by throwing an EMI filter on them. You can buy them from Amazon (be careful of weird pseudosciency crap from people worried about power lines, though) or Digikey.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

Xander77 posted:

Let's say I want to conduct an interview via zoom \ skype \ whatever, and want my side of the conversation not to look like utter poo poo because I'm literally using a cell phone - what would I want to purchase?

Other posters have already mentioned decent webcams (midrange Logitech and you're good), but what you really need is lighting. With good lighting and a mediocre camera, you'll look good - you might not get a perfectly clear image, but it'll be compressed to sub-720p by your conferencing software anyway. Fancy cameras and software can compensate a bit for bad lighting with HDR tricks and post-processing, but there's only so much they can do.

So, once you get your webcam, set up some basic portrait lighting. This doesn't need to be particularly fancy or expensive. Make sure you're not backlit, and you're already better than a lot of webcam interviewees.

Get a cheap adjustable arm lamp, put it near your webcam, and point it straight at your face, and you'll have even, bright light that works pretty well. It will take a bit of tweaking to find the spot where you still get good lighting but don't feel like you're staring into a lightbulb when you look towards the camera.

If you want to get super fancy, put the same adjustable arm lamp off to the side, shining on your face from somewhere around either 10 or 2 o clock (with the camera at 12). That's your key light, that creates shadows on your face that give it depth and lets you highlight features. Want your face to look more angular? Put the key light further out to one side. Want to flatten your features? Bring it in. Then, get a second, shaded lamp (or, a ring light for maximum insta points), and put that close to straight ahead, near the camera, on the opposite side of the key light. That's the fill light, that puts diffuse light across your face so shadows are just a bit darker, instead of deep lovecraftian voids. Pick up some dimmable bulbs and some plug-in dimmers, and you've got basic portrait studio lighting for maybe $50-75.

tuyop posted:

Oh? What happened?

They do a lot of "research" by reading Amazon reviews, trust posted specs without testing them, and recommend some sketchy no-name products because their one sample worked OK or the reviewer liked a gimmick. The days when they were the only people actually testing USB hubs or whatever other random gadgets for performance are long gone.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

VelociBacon posted:

I use one, I don't think I noticed any latency but tbh you can use a mini-usb and use it as a wired controller, it's ideal so you don't have to worry about batteries/fill up landfills with batteries.

NiMH batteries work great. Rechargable AAs are far better for the planet than "the glued-down battery in this controller is worn out, better toss the whole thing and get a new one."

As far as the controller goes, a good Bluetooth implementation works fine, but some bad adapters can cause latency problems. If that happens you can get the older-style non-Bluetooth USB adapter for $25 or so.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

Chaitai posted:

How many fans / orientation should I have in my Lian Li II Mesh case? Right now, I have 2x 140mm front intake, 2x 140mm top intake, 1x 140mm exhaust.

I have room for one more front intake fan, but I'd have to change from 140mm to 120mm to do so. Would it be better to do that and then flip the top fans to be exhaust?

I know you generally want to have more intake than exhaust, but have I gone to far? My cpu idle temps are around 30C and gets up to about 77C in Cinebench 23.

e: spelling

First of all: are you particularly concerned about those temps? They seem fine.

If you're not happy with them, experiment with it. All things being equal, it's usually better to have your top fans exhausting so you're not fighting natural convection, but case airflow probably isn't the limiting factor in your cooling.

If you think your case airflow might be an issue, pop off the side and point a box fan on high at the inside of your PC. If temps drop significantly, you've found the issue.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

FCKGW posted:

I installed an AMD Wraith Prism RGB cooler and the lights turn off at low fan speeds, how do I keep them on all the time? They seem to be on when the PC starts are all the fans are ramped up, but when it calms down all the lights go off. I plugged in the USB connector and install the software and it says they're all "On" but I think the low speeds are overriding that?

How is the fan control set up on the motherboard?

A lot of motherboards support two different fan control methods: PWM, and variable voltage (which is really just PWM on the motherboard instead of in the fan). With PWM control, the fan always gets the full 12V power supply, and there's a separate wire to tell it how fast to run. With variable voltage, the motherboard directly changes the voltage on the 12V line, because lower voltage means the fan will spin slower.

I'd guess that you've got it running with variable voltage control, and when your motherboard drops the fan voltage below some critical level, it's not getting enough juice to run the lights any more.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

LRADIKAL posted:

Tablets I've had can have ads removed by paying on amazon. Also, it's really easy to sideload apps root kindles, etc. They are not super locked down at all.

No. It's not easy at all to root a Fire tablet. Amazon is well aware that if there are any easy one-click root operations, then they'll miss out on a lot of ad revenue and extra dollars from ad-free tablets.

Here's a relevant example: https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/fire-7-2019-mustang-unbrick-downgrade-unlock-root.3944365/

You can do it in software, which "will get you into bootrom mode by obtaining temporary root and temporarily bricking the device." The command involves zeroing out the first 4kB of the stock bootloader. Or, you can do it with hardware, which requires you to physically open up the tablet and short some debug pins. The whole thing requires a bare metal Linux installation (no VMs allowed).

It's not hard to load Play services (including the Play store) onto a Fire, but it takes a lot of work to get around Amazon's stock launcher and Android installation, on the hardware where that's even possible at all. And, of course, there are no guarantees about future compatibility with anything. If you already like playing with technology, Fire tablets can be a cheap, fun toy - but they're designed so that all the easy paths lead back into Amazon's walled garden.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

FCKGW posted:

Yeah SD card fakes are so pervasive that I would never order them online, even stuff shipped and sold by Amazon.

Best Buy is the same price anyways and if not they'll price match.

Amazon's commingled inventory system means that, for items that are supposed to be the same, they'll take your Sold And Shipped By Amazon.com order and fill it with inventory shipped in by Crazy Jimmy's Totally Reliable, 100% Legit Flash Media.

For anything that can be counterfeited, they've gradually turned into a very fast version of AliExpress.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

me your dad posted:

I'm back with more hard drive questions. After ordering the right adapter (thank you Helter Skelter!) I was able to access two of my three old hard drives.

One HD didn't work, and I discovered one of the pins on the IDE connector is broken. A little nub is poking out but I have zero soldering skills, and I have very shaky hands. In theory, could I pull an old pin out of one of the other drives, and kind of jam it in next to the broken one so it makes contact? Would that be enough to at least access it short term to grab any files I want?



Are you sure it's actually broken off? It looks like it's just pushed in from somebody trying to push a keyed cable in way too hard.

If there's enough of a nub to get some needle nose pliers on it, you might be able to just pull it back out.

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Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.
What are you actually trying to do with this tablet?

Google gives absolutely no fucks about android tablets and hasn't for a while. Samsung has some cheaper-than-an-iPad options with OK hardware, although performance at the low end is mediocre and you have to deal with the Samsung NEW GALAXY TAB AVAILABLE NOW! issues like ads.

If you just want the cheapest available Android gadget then Fire tablets are OK. You're locked into the Amazon Experience, though (spoiler: Prime services are always front and center). You can get Google Play on them if you're willing to deal with semi-janky hacks.

Space Gopher fucked around with this message at 21:12 on May 15, 2021

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