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This problem is related to my new pc but I wanted to start a new thread in case others are experiencing the same issues, rather than burying this deep in the new pc thread. Here's the issue in a nutshell-I can't get my microcontroller programmer to work on my new machine. I more or less solved...

You could try booting from the old boot drive in your new machine and convert that way. You would probably need to do a repair install of XP for that but I don't see why it wouldn't work. In a bit of irony, I had planned to convert my existing install of XP to a VM after my new system was in the...

Polar alert here. Heavy wet snow on all the tree branches here. It wouldn't surprise me if we see more outages. Totally weird weather. Hurricanes to blizzards in less than 10 days.

Basically, this election was a referendum for the GOP to dump the Tea Party nut cases, as well as embrace things like clean energy, public transit, sustainable development, and economic issues which matter to the middle class (hint-that doesn't mean cutting taxes on the rich). If they don't do...

Thanks for the condolences guys. If anything, at least Sandy took our minds off the cat for a while. If you don't hear from me for a while after the next storm, it means either power went out again, or I'm cleaning a flooded basement. BTW, if you want to check on whether or not I have power...

While on the subject of vision, the big problem with lasik is that what you'll gain for distance vision you'll sacrifice for close-up vision. It's much more important for me to be able to do fine work without magnifiers or reading glasses than it is for me to be able to read street signs. In...

I just want to report that I got through the storm OK. The major problem was a power outage which lasted from about 10 PM on the 30th until 1:39 AM EST today. That's 124+ hours without power-the longest I've been without power by far. The four major issues I found having no power are (in order...

Part of the reason the military is such a large part of our budget is that those in charge are still acting as if the Cold War never finished. The military needs to reinvent itself to deal with the primary threats of our era-terrorism and rogue states like North Korea or Iran. I wonder why we...

A nice goody box arrived today containing a PCI parallel port card and a brand new Intel 330 240GB SSD (thanks Dave :D)! I'll start playing around with this stuff tomorrow because I've been feeling a bit under the weather last few days (although all the nice stuff certainly brightened things...

I know there wouldn't be much of an air density gradient from the body to the chute. I'm thinking more along the lines of the chute not inflating much due to very little air pressure. Felix would probably still reach close to supersonic speeds by the time he hit maybe 100,000 feet. And the air...

For what it's worth if Intel had a better integrated GPU I may well have went in that direction. That said, this looks like it'll be a great system which should serve my needs for quite some time. Once the hardware is fully set up, the fun will begin installing Windows 7, and then making a VM...

The motherboard and CPU arrived yesterday. Everything seems to work OK, including the RAM I bought last year. I'll install everything in my case once the remainder of the parts arrive. Incidentally, those PATA to SATA converters I ordered work well. No problems plugging one of my PATA optical...

He's Austrian. And I'm pretty sure if he jumped with the parachute open he would have died. There is little air resistance at 128,000. He probably still would have gone supersonic or close to it with an open chute. Then when he hit thicker air the chute would be ripped to shreds. Or if it...

Thanks again everyone! :D I'll be looking for the package on Monday. I'll post pictures and also give my impressions once I've set up the system.

:) Thanks Merc! And a big thanks to the membership! I'll let you know when the package arrives. I already have the power supply. I also have four of these on the way. They seem like a better idea than using a PATA card, assuming of course that they work as described.

I'm also sorry to hear about this. Whenever I read about people who lived their lives like that, then die suddenly, I think what might have been had they lived long enough to finally realized the error of their ways and make amends with their family. At least he didn't leave behind any young...

Ugh, should have typed SF instead of SR. Just noticed it now.

What about sending money, having someone from SR buy the parts you need from Newegg or Amazon, testing them, and then shipping them to you? Or would that be prohibitively expensive or just problematic? It really sounds like your options are terribly limited buying locally.

I'm definitely not an expert on SSDs, but reading a lot of Newegg reviews pretty much confirms what Dave said. Intel is tops for reliability, and when they have shell shocker deals they're not much more than Samsung or Corsair. I agree about not splitting hairs over performance. All of the name...

Thanks! :) I think I'll go with this power supply. Not fanless, but based on the numbers the fan will probably hardly be turning.

No, it's definitely not for a high-powered PC. That setup will only work if the CPU's TDP is maybe 70 watts, perhaps 100 watts at the most.

Thank you all for doing this, and thank you Merc for organizing everything. It's really appreciated. Based on that total, it looks like the MB and CPU are covered, and Dave already took care of the SSD. :D I'll be buying the remaining bits and pieces on Newegg today-basically the power supply...

I think this is a better approach to passively cooling the CPU. If you use an SSD and fanless power supply, you have a virtually silent system. There might be a slight 60Hz buzz in the power supply which you'll hear in a very quiet room, but that will be about it.

If two of your caps have visible signs of failure, I'll bet good money ALL of the caps around the CPU power supply are out of spec. If you're handy with a soldering iron you can try to recap the board like I did with mine. The biggest issue is that the ground plane sucks heat away as you're...

I know the feeling. :( Even though my ancient A7N8X is working fine again, I've resigned myself to buying a new MB and CPU this month. I figure it's only a matter of time before it acts up again, and with my luck that will occur at the worst possible time.

Look for bulging caps around the microprocessor. If so, then that's probably the problem. In not, try reseating the RAM and the processor. If that doesn't work, I would guess either the motherboard or power supply is toast. My first guess would be the power supply. It sounds like the system...

I would personally feel more comfortable with my data on an SSD than on a mechanical drive. In the latter case, all I have is a few microns of air between the heads and platter separating my data from disaster. It's really amazing mechanical drives work at all, let alone that they are as...

I'd love to see a comparison of the A10-5800K and A10-5700(K?). The 5700 isn't yet available at Newegg. If it's not severely handicapped compared to the 5800K, I would probably go with it, especially if the idle power scales with TDP. The 5800K already does very well in that department. It would...

I agree about smooth frame rates. The rare times I can hit 60 fps things seems much more fluid. And yes, I tend to turn up all the detail to the max. The good news here is should the high resolution monitors become affordable in the next few years, I can always add a discrete graphics card if...

1280x1024. I don't have a widescreen monitor. Incidentally, my A7N8X plays MS Train Simulator and BVE passably well, so any upgrade should have my present and future needs in that department covered, even for a larger monitor. On another note, will newer systems like the one I'm interested in...

There's loads of things like that in NYC but the big problem is my hobby interests mean these groups would be 99% male (except maybe for biking, which can be mixed company). Also, running my own business with its crazy schedule pretty much precludes being able to do anything with regular...

This is why school for me was a great way to meet females. You're forced to share space in the classroom, so the time is there to appreciate people you might otherwise quickly dismiss. And you always meet others through your friends. I had lots of friendships of varying levels with females...

Same problem here. I have friends, but none of them really do things where you might meet females, and none have lots of unattached female friends.

Of course I would feel like shit if I put in a huge amount of effort trying for a relationship but coming up empty. In fact, a friend of mine was in exactly that position a few years back. It's only human to feel that way. I spent much of my early to late 20s walking aimlessly around NYC, or...

For what it's worth here I pretty much gave up on ever having a significant other when I was younger than Merc. It's not that I couldn't get someone if I tried, especially in a place like NYC. It's just that what I could probably easily get I personally wouldn't find all that appealing or worth...

That's just it-chances are good in this case that I might never need to upgrade either the GPU or CPU before it was time to upgrade the M/B. I'm not so sure that would be the case if went with Intel here and/or a discrete graphics card. I don't deny discrete graphics cards may offer some...

I vaguely remember running optical drives off a promise controller and not having any issues. I suppose I could see if it works in my present machine. Yeah, reading the reviews on Newegg those USB parallel ports seem to be hit or miss. That's why I think I might have more luck with parallel...

Newegg was selling the Intel 330 series 180 GB for $110 but they're out of stock now. The Samsung 830 128GB looks like it might be a good fit. Maybe wait for the 840s to come out and hope for a price drop (not that the current $90 price is bad)? Regarding the A10 Trinity, as Chewy said it...

It looks like Trinity is finally in retail channels. This M/B looks pretty close to what I need. If it had a parallel port header and a pair of PATA ports it would be perfect but I can get around those limitations. Since my A7N8X-E is still purring along, I'll wait a few weeks just to see if any...

Sounds good to me. Once I set up my machine I may need some tech support here on how to set up VMs but it sounds like a better solution than dual-booting. Yes, I will try that first just to see if it works.

If the upgrade path is particularly buggy what about having a dual boot setup where I have my current XP install and Windows 8? Is this possible? I'm probably stuck with XP for some applications which might not work well or at all under 8, such as my DOS-based PCB design software. You're right...

Because it would likely cost more than an AMD based system, and the graphics performance might not meet my future needs. Besides that, I like the idea of helping Intel's competitor.

I'm assuming by that you mean they both need to be either 32-bit or 64-bit? I never am when I do stuff like that. Some semi good news here. I reapplied thermal compound to my CPU heatsink and also bent the female pins on the power cable of my power supply so they make better contact. The...

Lunar, if that future comes then I'm moving to Linux. Last thing I need is to store my data remotely and have to depend upon a gazillion things all working right in order to access it. I'll bet I won't be the only one leaving MS for good in that scenario, either. Honestly, I would be happy using...

Apparently I'm not the only one pissed off that M$ didn't offer a direct upgrade from XP to 7. I'm hoping they fix that oversight with 8.

Well that sucks. :( Any chance I'll be able to do a direct upgrade with Windows 8 then? It's stuff like this (and the aforementioned parallel port issue) which has made me keep using a computer which is a museum piece for so long. Doesn't M$ realize that people spend literally years setting...

I'll definitely wait then for the next generation APU then. The A10-5700 looks perfect for me. The rationale for choosing AMD over Ivy Bridge is to get as much graphics horsepower as I can without a dedicated graphics card. I'd rather avoid graphic cards at this stage because it's another...

BTW, is AMD releasing Trinity in October as planned? If I upgrade, I'd much rather go with Trinity than Llano, if for no other reason than it supposedly uses less power and is faster.

Merc, so you're saying I can upgrade from XP to, say, Windows 7, without reinstalling all my apps? Or is there another way to do what I want, which is to keep all my apps? Can I run an XP virtual machine which is identical to my current setup from Windows 7?

I just realized something looking at some of the specs on new PSUs-few of them have power plugs for PATA devices. That's not a major issue. I suppose I can just splice the plugs onto a new PSU. Both my optical drives and the 250 GB HDD are PATA. I can run all of them off my Promise Card if the...