What Have You Done Today - (Computer Version)

  • Thread starter tlowr4
  • 4,212 comments
  • 292,246 views
Finally upgraded my video cards in my computers. Went from 2x Quadro FX 3500's in non-SLI, to a single Radeon HD 5850. Brought the old girl back up to speed to play some recent games. Full Specs...

HP xw6400
Intel 5000x chipset
2x Intel Xeon 5160 3.0ghz
8gb DDR2-5300 ECC
120gb Sandisk Extreme SSD

...Believe it or not, it's still a reasonably fast system. Not the most power efficient thing in the world though.
 
I just amused myself for a while by listening to my graphics card. A while back I wanted to use a USB port to power a microphone I made, but it was extremely noisy so it was a no-go. I thought I'd try out my new oscilloscope to have a little look at the noise that was being generated, and found it was related to the frame rate of my PC; at about 15fps (BF4 on ultra, 1080p, 200% scaling) it sounded like a big V8 idling pretty rough and at 200fps (BF4 on normal, 1080p, 100% scaling) it sounded like a phone vibrating on a table. Fortunately I have an external power supply I can use for my mic, but it's interesting that my graphics card is apparently introducing noise - presumably within spec since it's not causing any issues - in my USB ports.
 
I spilled a beverage on my Retina Macbook Pro, which fried it.

Soooo... I'm off to buy a new laptop. Don't need anything excessively powerful since I now own a $4000 gaming desktop, so something in the $600-800 range should suffice.
 
I have been weighing options for a new DVR for the basement TV. The TiVo Roamio looks to be the best option, but it's very expensive when adding lifetime service. The Verizon FiOS DVR looks OK, but it has a high monthly cost and is therefore likely to be more expensive than the TiVo Roamio. I'm currently testing a third option and it's been very promising.

I have an old Mac mini and a Windows 8 "B System" I made out of leftover parts. I'm thinking I may make one of them into a permanent Windows 8 Media Center PC. I purchased an HDHomeRun Prime (down to $99 USD now) and set it up over the weekend. It's really slick! I'm impressed with how well it works. Windows Media Center has a really nice, responsive program guide, and I like that it's extensible. DVR functionality seems to work well. Once I updated PlayReady I was able to watch and record premium movie channels without issue. I also love that I don't need to set up a coaxial drop in the basement. I can do everything over the LAN. The other feature I'm really enjoying is the HDHomeRun's DLNA streaming capabilities. My PS3 sees the channels as individual DLNA streams. My home office Mac mini now has live TV capability via VLC (with basic recording too!). I can also use my iPad as another screen with an app like nPlayer.
 
Capacitors. You need more capacitors.

I really do, I have a kit on order but it's not here yet!

Tonight, just as I was about to get an early night, it occurred to me that if you can make a Raspberry Pi into an AirPlay client, maybe you could do the same with an Ouya. You can, but even better than the RPi AirPlay stuff, you can play videos and even mirror iOS devices. It's not super reliable for putting YouTube videos on the big screen, Vine loses it's audio sync very easily, the audio is quite loud (not a big deal)... But if you're sitting in front of the TV these aren't game breakers. If I just wanted to stream audio I'd probably do the RPi thing (since you could configure it to run without a display) but for watching YouTube videos on a big screen it's perfect. Now it's 2.30am because I've been testing various things on it.

I can officially stream all of the things now. This stuff makes the Ouya well worth having, I can't help but feel this is the market they should've been aiming for in the first place.
 
Since I couldn't get the trackpad I had to work with my Raspberry Pi I've been thinking about just giving in and buying a laptop, but since I can't afford what I want yet (a 13" MacBook Air with all of the trimmings) my girlfriend has given me her MacBook, which is cool and all but also kind of pointless since she's specified that I must try and make it run better before gutting it in the hope that the trackpad is a straight USB device...

So I've formatted the hard drive and installed Snow Leopard, it runs remarkably well for what it is, which is a 1.3GHz Intel Core Duo with 512MB of 667MHz DDR2 RAM, a screen with a busted backlight inverter, a dead DVD-RW drive, a battery that isn't recognised by the logic board (a logic board fault, that, since the first one died after a few years and the official Apple replacement died within a week) and a cracked case. She took remarkably good care of it in the 7 years she owned it (she got it in 2006, got a new MacBook Pro in November) but this is why you never buy the first wave of a new Apple product; the design flaw that led to cracks appearing in the front edge of the case was addressed pretty quickly, as I recall.

Anyway, even though I must keep it plugged in at all times (difficult thanks to the Magsafe adaptor, oh the sort-of irony) it might make a serviceable domestic use only laptop (the charger failed the PAT I had to submit it for to use it at college, so...), so it doesn't exactly stop me from wanting an Air.
 
I bought a Plantronics .Audio 478 earlier today. Boy, was I disappointed. Only positives to it was its comfortable feeling and its great sound quality. Other than that, it has such a poor microphone. I couldn't hear myself not once attempting video chatting with the PlayStation 3. It was a waste of $54 USD from Wal-Mart.
 
I just finished building my new PC a couple days back. Contains a AMD FX6300 6 Core Processor, 8GB RAM, ASUS motherboard and I'll get myself a decent Asus graphics card soon.
 
Remounted my SSD to a different position on my computer. Computer is a dell 545MT. Had no room in my computer so instead of using rubber bands to tie it to the underside I put it on the side. Don't feel like buying an SSD bracket.


IMG_0071_zpsbdb70ad6.jpg

IMG_0071_zpsbdb70ad6.jpg.html
 
Cleaned up my hard drives on my PC's & deleted about 100GB of un needed files.
Backed up my text messages and files on my LG G-Flex
And rooted my Samsung Galaxy S4 (CM11)
 
Fz4PavF.png


This is a surprisingly capable machine, even if only because it runs Splashtop so I can connect to either my Mac (Pro) or PC and use them to do any heavy lifting, though this can play Netflix (fullscreened, anyway) which is quite surprising. It's a 2006 MacBook, it would be perfect if the battery was recognised (a logic board fault keeps killing replacement batteries so I stopped trying) and if the backlight inverter wasn't so dull, though I at least 'fixed' the strobing by stopping the display from dimming before sleeping.
 
Last edited:
Installed Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 for Windows Desktop
Purchased and Installed Adobe Dreamweaver
Recovered files from my old corrupted 8GB USB pen and then destroyed it with a hammer.
 
Finished installing a SSD into my MacBook in place of the disk drive that failed a few weeks ago. Having moved OS X to it along with my frequently used applications (iTunes, PS, Safari etc) my laptop is now running so quickly again it's unreal.


Next to replace the HDD that is in it with a larger SSD 500GB or so...
 
Today I've installed Ubuntu 12.04 on my EEE netbook to replace the ancient XP and honestly, I have no idea how to operate this thing. It feels like it's some sort of a tablet, the icons, the font, everything's so huge, is there some option how to make everything tinier? And how to auto-hide that taskbar on the left side?

Edit: nevermind, I've already installed Windows 7 and it's really great.
 
Last edited:
Don't know what window manager or desktop environment you're using with that Ubuntu setup, but try right-clicking an empty spot on the desktop and see if a menu pops up with an entry along the lines of "Configure desktop". Should be lots of options for configuring things. Not sure how to do autohide, but it's possible with most desktop environments.
 
Uninstalled Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 for Windows Desktop
Installed Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate (a friend of mine had a copy of the set up file with a few product keys.)
Factory reset my Samsung Galaxy S3
 
Cleared 80gb of useless downloads and programs, and defragmented 25% of a 80gb drive I assigned to gaming.
 
Yesterday I decided to organise my Steam library a little better and fix all the shortcuts that broke when I moved almost everything from D: to F:. Then I tried to use something called Ice that lets you add emulator ROMs and ISOs to Steam so you can play them through Big Picture (and I could therefore stream them with Limelight to my Ouya, in theory anyway) and it nuked 100+ shortcuts. Sigh. But I did manage to find more games to delete (saving around 100GB) and others that I hadn't played but I thought I had (potentially because I idled them for cards or couldn't get them to work) which were slung on the backlog. Next I want to add a category for games I need to play before I can start other games, such as the Tomb Raider, FEAR, Mass Effect, Brothers in Arms, Sam & Max or Star Wars franchises.

Then I did a little spring cleaning on my hard drives and probably removed a total of 600GB of crap from two 2TB drives and a 128GB SSD. I had three installations of DCS World plus one of DCS Black Shark, my huge rFactor install was broken (my key is missing and the DRM thing couldn't connect to the internet to fix it) and I decided to finally upgrade to RSRBR 2014 (from 2012) so that temporarily saved me 20GB.

I couldn't work out how to use Ice though, it looks like a really handy thing to have but it seems like a lot of work could be done to make it less confusing.
 
I have not played any game on my PC in probably 6 or 7 years. Maybe longer. With that said, I am in the process of getting my gaming PC hooked up to my 40" tv this weekend. Also bought a 12 plug surge protector which should make this process a lot easier. Hoping to fire up Age Of Empires 3 and maybe a few other games. If I have enough fun I might end up getting a wireless mouse and wireless keyboard so its easier to play on my couch. I will actually be surprised if the pc even starts. Been a LONG time. Not even sure if I will be able to get audio through my 6.1 surround sound using this PC.
 
@CAMAROBOY69 - The PC Master Race would like to welcome you back. It's been far too long. :P

- - - - -

Yesterday at work I attempted to connect a computer to a wireless router to then connect further downstream to some gear for the parking department. Unfortunately, the company that configured the router and the bluetooth hub changed all the default IP addresses, logins, passwords and PIN code (and rightfully so) but never bothered to provide us with that information. I'm still waiting to hear back from them about said "slightly" necessary pieces of information.
 
Just stripped down and cleaned my 6 year old HP DV2000 laptop (old beater but still runs great), now she's running quiet and cool :). Couldn't believe how much dust builds up in there not to mention how much rotting adhesive there was.

One thing though, I have 3 really tiny screws left over :odd:, ah well everything's running fine.
 
Back