Tech General Chat

[Pico]

Note: please don't post any troubleshooting questions or requests in this topic. Either post a new topic or use the pinned Random Questions topic for smaller issues

 

I'm pretty sure I made a thread like this before but it's been lost in the shuffle. I was hoping this could possibly get pinned because I'm sure tons of us would like to post small things that don't warrant a topic so it goes un-posted.

 

I for one, need to just complain for a minute.

As some may recall, the past few months I've been having PC problems where my computer just shuts down when pushed moderately hard. Well I think I found the cause... my thermal sensor was turned off in the BIOS for my CPU. I enabled it... all programs are showing readings of 80-85*C!!! I hear that's the HIGHEST my CPU temp should go... and it's sticking around that with moderate usage, about 80-83*C during idle. So I'm assuming my HSF isn't doing the job nearly as good as it should be... so I'm hoping to buy a new HSF ASAP!

 

Also, I found this at Tomshardware.com yesterday. Apparently an Intel i9 6-core CPU was just sold on eBay recently for $1,200. You heard me, SIX core CPU, and it's running at 2.4Ghz. Must be awesome with programs and games that can run them all. And $1,200 is a steal don't new i7's go for near that, if not more?

Source

 

Can't wait until I can even get a quad core, let alone a 6 core!

[Slamman]

I was told I'm the only LaserDisc fan and owner here, Well, I do own a few, and I took most of my later model Pioneers apart to work on, I have a gear/sensor issue where I swapped the laser diode assemblies to make sure things were good on that end, then I inspected the gear sync holes for the tray, they seemed good, everything that was visibly wrong I corrected, still, tray and disc load, I get the laser moving to read the media and a horrible clicking results, the gears are mis-aligned. Who nowadays can solve this issue? I'm only thinking a complete transport swap between players is the solution, but if anyone is SMART enough to figure it out, post or PM!! Soon

[Star-Lord]

Sweet! That guy has great taste and money too!

I bet he'll be kicking GTAIV's ass frame-wise when he gets it up and running.

 

Pico - Yeah! man get yourself a good trusted aftermarket HSF. Those temps are just right for frying eggs not for CPUs. JK

[Adam Jensen]

I was told I'm the only LaserDisc fan and owner here, Well, I do own a few, and I took most of my later model Pioneers apart to work on, I have a gear/sensor issue where I swapped the laser diode assemblies to make sure things were good on that end, then I inspected the gear sync holes for the tray, they seemed good, everything that was visibly wrong I corrected, still, tray and disc load, I get the laser moving to read the media and a horrible clicking results, the gears are mis-aligned. Who nowadays can solve this issue? I'm only thinking a complete transport swap between players is the solution, but if anyone is SMART enough to figure it out, post or PM!! Soon

Just switch to DVD or BluRay already, jeez.

[Slamman]

Dude, dude, dude. I had bluray on my PS3, it was pawned, so was the Xbox, the rent is paramount at the moment, then the electricity bills. I used to make $15 an hour or nearly, I was buying LDs with my paycheck and own about 200 of them, my friend who got me into Home Theater and LD, he's got over a 1000 discs and not nearly as nice a player as I'd been able to get. The import HF9G from Japan, I ebayed all the way from California and it was working, then stored then sold, then returned, now with this damn issue that has got me irked!

[Star-Lord]

 

I was told I'm the only LaserDisc fan and owner here, Well, I do own a few, and I took most of my later model Pioneers apart to work on, I have a gear/sensor issue where I swapped the laser diode assemblies to make sure things were good on that end, then I inspected the gear sync holes for the tray, they seemed good, everything that was visibly wrong I corrected, still, tray and disc load, I get the laser moving to read the media and a horrible clicking results, the gears are mis-aligned. Who nowadays can solve this issue? I'm only thinking a complete transport swap between players is the solution, but if anyone is SMART enough to figure it out, post or PM!! Soon

Just switch to DVD or BluRay already, jeez.

HA ha ha! QFT!

 

Every single topic he brings up the Acer or the Laser disc. Slammy is so entertaining, what would we do with out him? But I think he's the kind of person who really embraces old tech and nothing will change his views on it. DVD and Blu-Ray players are becoming so affordable that anyone can have one in their homes today but do you think he cares? Bring on the Laserdisc and the Betamaxes.

 

Just a week ago on Black Friday - they had Blu-ray players on sale at Walmarts for $75.00. DVD players are around $20-$29 at BestBuy for the Craig brand, freaking cheap as hell. Anyways! Like I was saying nothing will change Slammy's views on the old tech and why should any one even try to. Is what he likes and we should respect that.

 

Trust me Slamman would be the guy to call if you ever needed any help getting your old tech to work. I know I would if that was the case.

 

On topic: What the hell was a Laserdisc anyways! The oldest media format I can recall having was BETAMAX and VHS. I heard of it but never actually owned one. Some say 'Star Trek - The Wrath Of Kahn' was part of their Promotional Campaign at launch.

 

[Slamman]

It all stems from the desire to have something I couldn't afford, when I got into Laserdisc there was no DVD, baby. Just remember that!!

You can thank CD and DVD because of LD, so it's like blaming the innovation for what you have now, though I thought you LIKED what you have now?!?

[Starion]

Laserdiscs were very good at the time. They're just slightly outdated now when compared to the smaller, digital formats such as DVD's and Blu Rays.

 

They're still a versatile format today though. I watched a Laserdisc on my dads player a few months back and it was surprisingly impressive.

[Slamman]

My last viewing was Clear and Present Danger I posted in TV/Movies, it looks stellar, not a flaw on it I can see. I mean, people knocking it are just plain idiots, Laserdisc players still make the best CD transports in the World. Well, they can play one hella scratched up CD without missing a beat!

[Star-Lord]

 

It all stems from the desire to have something I couldn't afford, when I got into Laserdisc there was no DVD, baby. Just remember that!!

You can thank CD and DVD because of LD, so it's like blaming the innovation for what you have now, though I thought you LIKED what you have now?!?

I'm not complaining about innovation as a matter of fact I embrace it as it gets better and better. I do understand what your saying. Some of the tech we have now is due to old tech from the past in one form or the other, however if we remain with that concept alone how are we suppose to move forward.

Laserdisc even though I never-ed own any, I understand it had a short life span it was crushed by the Format wars of the time Sony Beta-max and VHS. Eventually VHS won. I love today's technology just like I loved yesterdays. I'm not against old tech, but I'm not a fanatic of it like you seem to be.

 

 

[Slamman]

I sent you some emails, of course. Thing is, I'm ranting on just the repair and hardship involved, I got two players down at the moment and I have to address them in some manner, and fast, they wanna bill me for the refund on the prior sale! I found these guys WAY out West of me...

http://www.laserdiscservice.com/about.htm

 

Dropped them a line, They're my new best friends! haha

Yeah, thing is, I owned them after they were affordable, DVD, I bought several and paid big bucks, the ultimate goal, to have the video processing and audio codecs rendered on board, hence, my fav DVD is a Pioneer model as well, it handles SACD and DVD AUDIO as well as DTS and DD surround, all on board! Mighty impressive back in the day.

 

Line doublers, front and rear projection, all that jazz, it was thousands and thousands of dollars, and now people take it all for granted, I get peeved about it, can't help it. I have respect for all that gear and enjoy using it too.

 

Ok, an update, I basically spread two internally similar players out on my bed, so I couldn't sleep till I solved this repair of mine. I pulled the laser sections off, I pulled out the disc's upper transport support (the top hub) and now I've pulled the full loading and support section, only two cables go to the main board, well technically three. Whatever the problem was, it's confined to the optical transport I suspect, if not something electrically amiss. I will swap the whole disc tray and support system between the two players. I took photos of this as well, because matching the gear positions is pretty important getting the loading tray back on. If you ever messed with a 5 disc DVD or CD player, you know how that goes!

I've dealt with more then a few, the old 3 disc stacked JVC proved a complete bullocks and I threw it out after holding onto it for far too long, JVC's multiple stacked disc system and Philips as well, I couldn't repair them. The small profile DVD changers are actually easier to repair.

 

I agree with Pico on those new Intels, they sure are something, but I believe that price is too, $1000 for a CPU is more then anything available I've seen at the local store, The highest was probably around $300 I think

Edited December 6, 2009 by Slamman

[Pico]

I see it was moved... but no pin? As I said, it'll help keep this area less cluttered and give us a proper place to BS on things that don't need their own topic.

I think most would agree that I'm not just doing this to go "OMG IM SOOO AWZUM I GOTTA PINND THRED" thing. It just makes sense for us to have a thread like this. I know the Vehicle area has it's own general chat topic, but this area gets a much, much larger amount of "help with this" threads than the vehicle chat does which is why that thread doesn't need pinning. Again, this one will just get pushed down in a week because of help threads.

 

 

@Slam, no way $300 is the limit, there's plenty over that. And here's the one I had in mind being around $1,200.

But it's actually "only" $999 at Newegg.com, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819115212

[cold fusion 33]

I've got a question, how long are we going to be waiting until we see Octo-Core processors really hitting the consumer market? I remember a topic ages ago by SegaciousKGB about an Octo-Core, and it seemed interesting. I know that Mac's already support and sell them in their Mac Tower thing, but when will PC's really start seeing their power?

[3niX]

Well...

 

I reported it for pinnage...

 

Seems like the sensible topic wed need... something aching to the PC gamers topic.

 

 

 

And on topic. Intel has pulled the plug for consumer "Larrabees":

http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/12/04/int...uture-variants/

[Slamman]

I meant $300 at the local outlet, used to PC shop at CompUSA here but that's a Staples store now! Another location is vacant.

Sad, sad.

 

I thought the mods locked this, for closure to the earlier LD posts, I got my best player working again, still makes some odd noise with the tranport like it's nudging the tray with some force, but not enough to rip things apart again, that one LD player cost me $500 off eBay, It's still one of the rarest of the rare! HF9G Pioneer. Just finished another LD movie on it.

 

I should think with more cores even like 64bit OS, there'll need to be code and software to exploit it. EVen an OS in some regard (as it's software creating the usuable interface with the hardware)

[supermortalhuman]

hey pico, have you looked in your HSF for dust? That sounds way too hot to be just a underpowered heatsync, especially if it didn't have issues long ago?

[Pico]

 

hey pico, have you looked in your HSF for dust? That sounds way too hot to be just a underpowered heatsync, especially if it didn't have issues long ago?

No, I clean out my PC regular and the HSF isn't bad at all right now... but I've removed it twice with out reapplying thermal paste

Once was on purpose, the other time was because my PC fell and knocked two clips loose. So I'm assuming it's just not transfering heat well. And I'd like to get a whole new HSF because the stock Intel ones, as most agree, suck.

 

@cold fusion, the Macs you're talking about are actually running two Xeon Quad cores. From my understanding they are optimized as workstations, crunching match and algorithms, things of that nature well. I guess they wouldn't provide as much performance as a normal PC user would expect.

Here's the specs for one: http://www.apple.com/macpro/specs.html

 

As for Intel's 8 cores... I'm not too sure. I haven't heard much on them for a long while.

This 6-core being sold through me for a loop... if I've heard anything from Intel about a 6 core it was brief and didn't make an impression, because I don't remember!

[Cursed]

I just had a quick glance at the Wikipedia page for Laserdiscs, and those things were massive. Especially layed next to a DVD.

[Star-Lord]

Pico get some Artic Silver Thermal Paste from your local Radio Shack for $10.00 a pop. Apply a generous amount and watch those temps go down. It will smell like sh*t for a day or two, but it'll be worth it at the end.

[Pico]

Lol, yes Laserdiscs are friggin gigantic. Similar to the size of standard records, I believe. And they only spun at something like 400rpm right?

 

@pcguy, yeah I've decided I'll try and slap some thermal paste on. Hopefully it's right around $10 around here because I'm pretty broke this week

Hopefully it'll drop the temps to a reasonable level...

 

Edit: Added a poll, please vote!

I voted null btw, so no bias on my end. Keep it fair...

Edited December 6, 2009 by Pico

[Star-Lord]

@ Pico - Still same price a bit cheaper than last time I bought it.

Thermal Paste

 

BTW, Good luck! with the Poll

[Slamman]

I'd say no to the pinning, I figured it locked more likely. They just don't want too many pinned tpoics per section. As long as there's periodic bumps... should prove if successful

 

To stay on topic, were we ranting on associated subjects.?.. My current repair is proving still to have some wrinkles, only on one disc tested, it skipped after replacing most everything from one player to another, but it is working for the most part. Bugger

Edited December 6, 2009 by Slamman

[ChanandlerBong]

Very annoyed at the minute. Was just about to buy a desktop for £400-very good deal and then the day we were supposed to buy it they put it up £110. No warning, it wasn't on sale before they just put it randomly.

[Slamman]

That's what "layaway" is for, if you have some money to put down. Pawn shops are great in that way, you can layaway with very little money down

[Star-Lord]

Dell to Sell PC Factory to Foxconn

 

 

Dell Inc. said it reached a deal to sell a personal-computer factory in Poland to Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn, a division of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.

 

 

Michael Dell entered the retail PC markets and began cutting costs after returning as CEO in 2007.

.Terms of the deal, in which 1,600 Dell employees will be transferred to Foxconn, weren't disclosed. Foxconn will continue building Dell computers at the plant, Dell said. A Dell spokesman declined to comment on whether the Round Rock, Texas, company would close or sell other plants.

 

The deal is the latest example of how Dell has abandoned its once industry-leading strategy of building PCs to order in its own factories. While that structure helped Dell become the world's largest PC maker by volume at one time, the company has struggled in recent years. Since 2006, Dell has been outpaced by rivals Hewlett-Packard Co. and Acer Inc., whose outsourced manufacturing operations have become cheaper and more efficient than Dell's.

 

"They've been trying to get rid of plants for some time," said Shaw Wu, an analyst at Kaufman Bros. who said the deal is "positive" for Dell since owning factories can be a drain on PC makers' bottom line. "It's just become overhead for them."

 

In addition to getting rid of the Poland plant, Dell this year has closed its factories in Ireland and North Carolina. Last year it closed a plant in Texas. A Dell spokesman said the company still has factories in Texas, Brazil, China, India and Malaysia.

 

Dell's direct sales model-in which the company took orders online and only started building PCs after they were paid for-originally resulted in huge amounts of cash and fast growth. But in 2005, PC sales growth shifted from commercial buyers to consumers, who tend to buy in retail stores where Dell had no presence.

 

Competitors like H-P also found that by outsourcing PC production to Asian manufacturers like Foxconn, they could build huge volumes of PCs for retail stores more cheaply than they could on their own. Dell, meanwhile, kept committing to new factories in the U.S. and Poland and resisted entering retail markets. Sales and profits began lagging; Dell is now the world's third-largest PC maker behind H-P and Acer.

 

To revive the company, founder Michael Dell returned as chief executive in early 2007 and entered the retail PC market and cut costs. Last year, Dell began selling its factories. But that became difficult after the markets crashed in late 2008. The PC market shriveled, making PC factories an unattractive investment for buyers. In January, Mike Cannon, Dell's production chief who Mr. Dell recruited to overhaul the company's manufacturing, left Dell.

 

In the ensuing months, Dell closed its Ireland plant and moved production to Poland. It also raised controversy in North Carolina earlier this year when it closed its factory there that had received tax breaks from the state.

 

Dell has pushed into new markets in recent months. In September, it reached a deal to buy tech-services firm Perot Systems Inc. for $3.9 billion. Since then, Dell has announced that it will enter the smart-phone market.

 

SOURCE

 

FOXCONN makes some excellent gaming rigs.

[Saggy]

Well, we already have had a "tech news" thread tried, and we already have a "Random Questions" thread.

 

Also I'm opposed to trying to just throw everything into one topic. I don't know what about this appeals to people beacuse it is so disorganized and leads to ridiculously large posts in which people reference posts and information several pages back. It becomes a bit irritating rather quickly, and then of course if it does become large enough it will only be pruned and then all the information inside of it lost.

 

Past that, this forum isn't really that active anyway, so there's not really a tremendous volume of posts to where this is needed. Past that, if we did do this, I think it would eventually turn into a situation where all of the "chat" about PC Chat would turn into nothing but posts asking for help, which is already the grand makeup of the forum anyway. I think it's refreshing to see a post just discussing some random portion of technology, and if we start to bunch all of that up into one large post it will become monotonous and a bore to read.

 

 

It's already here though so people will use it however much they want. If that's a large amount, then it will be bumped to the top. If people aren't interested in posting in it, it will go to the bottom. Either way it doesn't really matter, but you said I had to justify why I said "no"...

[Pico]

Thanks for the good explanation Sags. I understand your points, some are true and similar to what Slam said.

But really, I don't think it'll turn into a "help me" thread as we already have one of those. As for it getting cluttered, that is the nature of general chat topics, even with a set theme such as this one.

I know this section isn't highly active but theres a good one or two dozen of us that frequent the area and as I've said (and as the past page now has shown), we all have small things we want to talk about which a new thread wouldn't warrant so they go unsaid. There's been tons of times where I've passed up posting info because I think it's rather unimportant but still interesting.

 

As for now, it'll obviously have to fight the tide of the endless help threads made by other forumers passing through...

 

@Chandlerbong, I hear you on that. We were looking at getting a PC for my brother about a year and a half, maybe two years ago. There were a few at Best Buy online with a Q6600 C2Q, 3GB or so and 500GB HDDs for like $600... then they just seemed to jump to $850 out of no where, then eventually switched to running Q8200's and the like. Sad how some awesome tech sells for nice prices at one minute then boom, gone.

[Slamman]

There is the "random question" but as with my repair, when I got it working, there's that feeling of success you just want to share, it makes you feel good about your ability to tackle those nagging electronic projects, crashes, errors, what have you. So ranting on something, or just basking in the glow of something that worked, that's good in my book. I find YouTube highly enjoyable for that as well, many people will tune into just tech videos and comment, more then I would have expected!

[Exkabewbikadid]

I can see the reasons for pinning this topic, but if we do, I think it should just be called Random chat rather than trying to cover news and information as well. I really don't think anyone minds if tech news topics are posted so long as people aren't posting every little tidbit of irrelevant news out there. Things like new graphics driver releases, news and rumors regarding future tech, discussion and comparison of tech-site reviews for a tech product, and so forth probably merit their own threads.

 

Edit - I also think the Reminder about Warez post ought to be copied into the Read Before Posting A Question topic to reduce clutter. Any Objections?

[Cursed]

That all seems fair enough to me. I think this sort of topic is useful since there are times when you want to say something but not create a new topic, and it can't be put into the Random Questions.