Archive for November, 2009

Old man hates wifi

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

Well, no, he doesn’t, but I am reminded of why I probably should have stuck Yggdrasil on LAN rather than wireless-n. My router tends to drop its wireless radio every so often until either it realizes something is wrong and reboots itself (usually within a couple hours of wireless radio dropping) or unless I go downstairs and reboot the router myself (because when wireless radio drops, I also can’t remote into the router and reboot from there). He’s going Gigabit LAN mode in January at the latest, I only have him on wifi for now because it was the cheapest option at the time, and I can always hold onto his wireless-n stick to be reused on another machine later on. ;P

Anywho… old man box is otherwise awesome. He’s loading up on music and such from Blastoise first, then I’ll copy over the games. It will be interesting to see how Yggdrasil runs games (he is certainly capable of it, packing a 9500GT after all… even though Blastoise is probably much better), but as far as video and such, he is a badass old guy. He ESPECIALLY benefits from Windows Media Center, particularly the Netflix instant view plugin. Running that on an HDTV is the next best thing… no, BETTER than having a Roku box. >:D

The only annoyance aside from the wifi is that most text is a little hard to read from where I sit, but that is easily fixed by forcing Yggdrasil to render text bigger– something I’ve never had to do on any other machine for obvious reasons.

Also like Blastoise, Yggdrasil has a cute beep that he makes on bootup. Typical for machines with MSI mobos. It’s sorta like how Samsung TVs have their 8-bit-sounding beeps that are reminiscent of the original GameBoy or, more amusing, the old Konami sound. XD

I thought my HDTV had picture-in-picture but apparently it does not… HOWEVER, slapping the Slingbox client on Yggdrasil makes for an acceptable workaround. True, it has a few seconds delay because of the network, but I can still fake picture-in-picture so I can still watch TV while doing other stuff on him. >:D

Old Man is a latecomer

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

Yggdrasil booted! Yay!
Because Microsoft is a bunch of tards about using upgrade media on virgin drives, Iggy has to do the “double-install” workaround so he’ll activate. Given how much of a pain he was to just turn ON, this is acceptable >_>; Once his OS checks out, I’ll load him up with the stuff that makes him awesome. >:D (Painter, Hamachi, VLC, WoW, etc.)

He went 64-bit, by the way. He might struggle a little until January, but I’ma crank him up to 4GB. (And Blastoise to 8!)

(Instant Ramen Sketchbook) Half-Dozen Avatars

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

So I couldn’t write off the entire day as being a crock because of lame-o front panel wiring blah, I went and cut higher-res individual pieces of the Avatars from that earlier group shot.

The wonky thumbnails? Blame Gallery2 (the server software for on-site Instant Ramen Sketchbook). >_>


Taking another crack at Yggdrasil’s FP wiring tomorrow. Hopefully it will end in me being hideously bored while waiting for him to patch stuff (also pizza).
For now, I’ll fall asleep to disaster flicks. >_>;

Front panel wiring is stupid.

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

Seriously, system building would be so much easier if front panel wiring for Power/Reset switches and such were done like their front panel USB/Firewire cousins– lump them all into one head and enforce a standard layout for the pins rather than break apart the wires and leave us punks second-guessing if we transposed or inverted the wire placement.

…yeah, I think that makes it pretty clear that Iggy did not boot again. Bleh. I don’t feel like cracking him open YET AGAIN today to figure out where I botched it (even though I literally had the manual in the other hand) and it’s already so late, so I’ll just wait until tomorrow.

Raiding CBS’s stash of Craig Ferguson monologues and such makes Yoshi the Computer Monster not so >:(. Maybe I should have episodes run when I crack open boxes. For the lulz!

Now let’s try that again…

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

SO. I swapped out Yggdrasil’s motherboard. Save for his optical drive, the old man box now has pretty much new parts across the board– new mobo/CPU/RAM, new hard drive, new video card, new PSU. I’ve not carried him back down the hall to my room yet, giving my fingers a chance to rest a bit (relatively speaking– typing is nothing compared to mucking with teeny-tineh front panel wires and things). I’m not going to say “no reason he shouldn’t boot” because I know if I do, I’ll be back here dragging a giant squiggly-line ball and ranting about… who-knows-what. So, I won’t jinx myself there >_>;;;

Smart Yoshi is SMART, though, and did all the front panel wiring and crap before putting the mobo in the case. And I am so glad I did, because it would have been an extremely murderous thing for my fat fingers to do if I did that stuff last. However, due to cable hell… er… the placement of certain things is a little unflattering– Iggy’s mobo is only bolted in with one screw (his case only came with one riser and I don’t have any spares in my pouch of extras) and his hard drive is propped up against one of the rails, but so as long as I don’t jiggle him around– why would I, he’s a bloody DESKTOP– then there shouldn’t be any problems. >_>;

Also: AMD! I love you and I jumped ship from Intel for you but you get fail points on the design of the heatsink that came with the Athlon X2 I’m using. What the bloody SMOO are these bronze-looking pipe… things for? They make it a pain to latch in the clasps on the mobo. Boo. BOOOOO.

You know who else warrants a boo? Microsoft. I know, it’s always hip to hate on Microsoft for just about everything… and while I’m normally indifferent to them, they’re really being dumbasses about Windows 7 licensing when they are better off shutting up and being grateful that its launch didn’t blow up in its face. First it was being vague about using upgrade media for clean installs, and now it seems they don’t like small-fry, hobbyist system builders like me who buy OEM versions of Windows because it’s cheaper than retail. See this gem:

Yes, individuals can still buy OEM versions of Windows 7. But they cannot then install that copy of Windows 7 on a PC they are building for themselves. Instead, they can only install it on a PC that they then sell–and support–to someone else. And they must do so using Microsoft’s OEM pre-installation kit (OPK), a step that is clearly aimed at further preventing this type of software from being used by the hobbyist market.

What the crap, Microsoft? You might as well just say “CHEATER CHEATER PUMPKIN EATER, YOU DIDN’T GIVE US ENOUGH COINS.” Well, eff that. I’m a system builder– not for profit, mind you, and often at my own expense– and though I did use retail copies of 7 because they were so ludicrously cheap, I will continue to buy OEM whenever I build new boxes. Here is your Wario hat, have a nice day.

If you’ll excuse me, I’ve an old man to piggyback down the hall.