(formerly)tangentmind.org

So, I moved out of my parents house and in with my girlfriend. Very fun. It took me a little while to get the internet up, and when I did, I didn't really feel like posting.

I have a fixed a number of random things and learned some interesting things though, and I just decided that I should be posting them, because someone else might find them useful.

Let's see..where to start...

PCCHIPS M810LMR
I have a pcchips m810lmr motherboard. I have a Sapphire Radeon 9600xt plugged into it. I had Ubuntu running on it but Ubuntu never seemed stable when games and videos were playing, which is annoying, because stability is a big reason I bought the board in the first place. I thought it might have been Ubuntu, because I had upgraded it many times and it was low and hard drive space it had hard restarted many, many times, and the installation came from the old motherboard. So I reinstalled Ubuntu, and also Windows 2000 on a larger hard drive. I then found out that games and video were not stable under windows either, so I looked online and decided that I probably needed to turn down the AGP speed. I now know that I have to set the AGP speed to 1x in order for the computer to be stable, even though the motherboard can do AGP 4x and the card can do AGP 8x. It's stable so I'm happy.

Next, I've had a lot of problems getting windows update to work on a couple computers. I've solved some problems with it and ran into others. I know that's not helpful, but I'm throwing it out there anyway.

GRANDPA'S LAPTOP
I tried installing a belkins wireless usb adapter on my grandpa's old presario 1235 laptop. It has, I think, an amd k6-2 266mhz processor, 96 mbs of ram, and no network ports. The drivers, under 98 caused the system to crash. 98se might have worked but I just went ahead and install windows 2000. It's relatively slow, but I turned off as many services as I could, I installed AVG, which is one of the least resource hogging AV clients I could find, and I haven't installed any other programs that start with the computer, besides the belkin wireless client. I'm having problems with the windows update website, but I got all the major updates installed and automatic updates is working. I did have an annoying bug where an update kept asking to be installed constantly even though it had supposedly installed sucessfully, but I got rid of it by installing an MDAC thing..I googled it.

MOM'S CD DRIVE
My mom's cd drive quit working. It acted as if the power was gone. I just unplugged the dvd drive, which I knew was getting power(and doesn't actually work correctly), and plugged those plugs into the cd drive.


INTERNET HOOK UP
I had a little fun getting the internet hooked up. By fun, I of course mean pain. First of all, Cox seemed to think my duplex neighbors address was mine, even though the duplex neighbors mailing address was correct. I had to go to the Cox service building with my lease, but it got all straightened out. Then I found out that the Cox cable modem that I had, I couldn't use because the people who had it before me had a delinquent account. I ended up trading the duplex neighbors their extra cable modem, for me fixing their computer.

The computer was a total wreck though. Pre SP1 install; No windows XP updates installed ever; No antivirus installed; No antimalware; limewire with undoubtedly p2p malware; malware from bad porn sites; installation of bogus programs. I got sp2 installed by running a windows xp home sp2 repair cd, and I ran a number of antimalware programs and antivirus. There were something like 20 viruses and 200 infected malware files. I got some of the updates installed but some of the other ones hung at the installation. I tried about a dozen things, but I'm not sure if any of them helped.

I chose Cox cable over DSL for a couple of reasons. First of all, I didn't have to get any other services, like a phone line. Second of all, it was $15 for 6 months. Even after it goes up to about $30 that's still pretty good considering that I don't have to pay for a phone line. The blocked all the tv signals with some signal splitter blocker thing. I can't get at it to take it off. They have some weird lock on the box. I can still get QVC, local access channel, and TBS though. Not sure why. Installation was free, but I had to use this old dirty rg-59 cable or it would have cost me something like $30-60 for a nice new rg-6 cable install with a nice new wall plate and everything.
Edit: I forgot to mention one of the biggest reasons I got Cable over DSL internet. At my parents house which is only a few blocks away, the DSL is very slow, about 40 KB down, because of old phone lines. The same may be true where I live. However, cable is not affected by old phone lines, so cable speeds are about 200 KB down. Possibly more if I opted for the RG-6 cable. However, this is faster than the advertised speed of the Cox internet package that I have, so I'm definately not complaining. Upload speeds are only slightly faster than the DSL speeds at my parents house though.

CABLE TV
I can get cable channels 2-29 for about $12 a month, which is the cheapest tv offer by far, but that's not a lot of channels. That would however get that tv blocker off, and if I could get my HD tv card set up with qam256 support(which I can only do in Linux because of Kworld's stupid BDA only windows drivers), then I might be able to pick up hd channels over cable, for free which would be completely awesome. Especially if I could get all of them, like Discovery HD, National Geographic HD, all the local channels(except a few multicast PBS channels), and Universal HD(stargate and Firefly in HD is awesome).

I may try the whole Linux QAM 256 thing in a little while.

In the meantime I'm picking up my channels from a midsize directional antenna I've got mounted to the top of the roof. I'm kind of down in a valley though so it's not really tall enough to get the best signal. I was using an amplified indoor antenna, but it wasn't the best quality and I live on the bottom of the duplex so I'm basically in a basement-like situation, and then there's the valley thing so the signals were sporadic. Also, my back yard floods when it rains...looks like a 1-6 inch deep lake. The valley thing. Seriously.

NEED A JOB

Did I mention that I need a job? Really badly need a job. Looking for one. Took a break. Had some leads, and interviews, but didn't pan out. I'm pretty much up for anything at this point.

Labels: computers