Computer building pitfalls to avoid

While I saved about $150 building this computer myself (I saved even more by using my old computer parts like case, DVD drives, hard drives and PCI cards) I have found myself wasting a lot of time troubleshooting things that I probably wouldn't have if someone else built the computer. Looking back though, I would still build it myself just for the experience and fun of putting it all together. One thing I have learned is if you don't know what it's for....you shouldn't enable it!! I ended up turning on something called Boot Manager that came with 7Tools Partition Manager. Don't enable it unless you know what you're doing. It caused me to reinstall my operating system because I didn't know what I was doing.

So here is a list of problems I ran into in this whole process:
1) My motherboard only suppors two IDE devices through the built in IDE controller. My first set of problems came when I tried to install Windows XP to the hard drive connected to the Motherboard through tehDVD-ROM drive connected to my PCI IDE controller. For some reason when the drivers were being loaded form the Windows XP CD, it could no longer read from the drive. So I ended up connecting one DVD-ROM drive and one Hard Drive to the Motherboard IDE controller to install Windows XP....everything was fine. Once installed, I connected the main hard drive and slave hard drvie to the motherboard IDE controller and all other devices to the PCI IDE controller. (by the way this was an XP repair install not a fresh clean install on a new partition)

2) I installed a couple games to the system drive but for some rerason they would not launch. Games that ran off the hard drive (like the Call of Duty 4 Demo) worked fine. The full version of Call of Duty 4 did not work. I knew my system was powerful enough to run the game since the dome worked, so I ended up installing Windows XP fresh over my old system. Same problem. The solution was to connect the DVD drives to the motherboard IDE controller instead of the PCI IDE controller. Problem solved....everything works fine now. I don't know why that makes a difference but it does. Had I known these issues, I may have researched a bit more into a motherboard with TWO IDE controllers built in.

3) 7Tools Partition Manager and Restorer 2000 are great programs worth every penny I paid for each. They have saved me on numerous occasions when I needed ot recover information off a hard drive or had to repartition a drive without blasting over it. However, in 7Tools Partition Manager there is an option for enabling a boot manager. I do not know what this does, but for some reason I enabled it anyway. BIG mistake. It caused my system to go into a never ending reboot loop where I could not get into the operating system. So I had to re-install Windows XP again. In this process I also lost my largest 250GB hard drive and all its contents. I was able to use Restorer 200 to recover most of it, but some files were corrupted and some were just too big, I had no place to put them. I also lost about 120GB of space on my drive. I'm still trying to figure that one out, but lesson learned....if you don't know what it does, don't mess with it!!

All in all it was a very enlightening learning experience to put this fancy little computer together. I don't at all regret buying the pieces from NewEgg and building it myself, I just wish I had known about the whole IDE thing earlier and ESPECIALLY I wish I had not enabled Boot Manager! Lesson learned. At this point all of my games work, my encoding software is lightning fast and both of my LCD screens look great!

Super Fast Computer!

I just completed a few benchmark testing cycles with the new computer and I am very impressed....even before overclocking! I've been using these programs for testing purposes:
CPUMark 2.1
ViMark Video Encoding Benchmark
Heavyload (for testing the overclock stability)
Nero Recode (for compressing DVD-9 into DVD-5 size)
Handbrake (for converting DVDs to AVI for my PalmTX...gives a frames per second encode speed)

The programs I've been using for monitoring temperature and clock speed:
CPUTrueSpeed
CPU-z
RightMark CPU Clock Utility

RightMark CPU Utility is great for monitoring (CPU Clock speed, temerature, performance monitor, etc). It looks like it does everything. When running, it sits in the little clock bar and just lets you know what's going on....without getting in the way! I love it.....and it's free! I've tried the provided EasyTune5 for overclocking the processor and it seems to to a great job. It's super easy and the best thing about it, is it resets your settings back to default every time you restart your computer (unless you tell it to do otherwise). I like that in case I mess something up, I can reboot and all is well again.

Even though I haven't done a LOT of speed testing due to some unforseen issues which wasted a lot of my time, I'm very impressed with the dual 2.66GHz processor. I'll see if I can post some screen shots of my testing results for comparison, but it's fast!

I've installed some new games and they look awesome! Call of Duty 4 and Rainbow Six Vegas run very smoothly and look great!

New Computer Progress

The new computer is now up and running after a few different trouble shooting sessions. After putting all the components together and powering up, the motherboard would POST (Power On Self Test) and I could get into the system BIOS, but it would not boot the operating system off the hard drive. Granted I was using my old hard drive and had my doubts it would actually boot, I was disappointed to find I couldn't even boot off the WindowsXP CD-ROM. I got as far as the "Starting Windows" blue screen after it loaded the drives, then would freeze.

My configuration at the time was the System hard drive and one slave hard drive were attached directly to the only IDE controller on the Motherboard. The two DVD-R drives were connected to a Promise PCI IDE controller card. Turns out that I needed to connect the DVD-R and the system drive to the same IDE controller on the motherboard in order to launch WindowsXP off the CD and repair my Windows XP installation on the system hard drive. Once the repair was complete, I was able to load all the new drivers for the new components and now everything is up and running smoothly. I don't think I lost any data!! I'll need to go in and reconfigure the drive letter back to the original settings but that's no big deal (especially compared to losing all my data)

The bottom line....everything works, so far it seems to be running faster than before and I didn't even have to reinstall the operating system from scratch.

Things to try with this new system:
-Compare video encoding speeds with old benchmarks
-Play old games and see if they run faster
-Try overclocking
-Eventually install Windows Vista

I'm a bit nervous to do overclocking but this Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L motherboard came with the software for overclocking. I like this idea better then going into the system BIOS and doing it from there since I don't really understand all the different settings and options.

So far so good, I'm doing a DVD encode right now using Handbrake and it seems to be only using half the processing power, I'll need to figure out how to fix that. I think on the laptop it uses 100% processors...but that runs on Vista. I shouldn't complain though, this is a juge jump in speed than my old Pentium 4 2.4GHz computer. I think it encoded at about 75fps, this is currently at 154fps.

YouTube videos on your PALM

vconvert.net allows you to enter the URL of a Youtube video and convert it to a WMV, QuickTime or Flash video and download it to your computer. The video is actually converted online using the server, then you just download the converted video, you don't need a super fast computer to get this done. I have not had any success with the WMV option, nor have I tried the Flash option. I've been able to use the QuickTimes and watch them on my computer right away.

To get them onto the PalmTX, I've used a program called PocketDivxEncoder to convert the QuickTime to an AVI file using the Divx codec. That AVI file plays very well on the PalmTX through TCPMP. PocketDivxEncoder is a pretty fast program for encoding files, but it is processor taxing so the faster your processor, the faster it will encode. This program does not work with Windows Vista.

Once you have the AVI file saved on your computer you can put it on your PalmTX SD card using a card reader. Don't try to 'sync' it through the Palm desktop software or the file will get converted again automatically to an ASF files (reducing its size and quality...again).

The videos you get from Youtube through this method aren't high quality by any means...it's Youtube for crying out loud. But if you're looking for a way to get some music videos on your Palm, it's the only way I know how.

New Computer

I'm putting together a new computer. I'll be using most of my old computer parts and upgrading to a new motherboard, processor, video card, and RAM. Hopefully it all works, but I'm a bit nervous putting it all together since I've never really done that before. I've taken pre-built bare bones systems and added to it, but never started from the motherboard and processor.

Here is my new parts list (all purchased from newegg.com for less than $500):
Motherboard- GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX
Processor- Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz LGA 775
Video Card- ASUS EN8500GT TOP/HTP/256M GeForce 8500GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16
RAM- G.SKILL 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory
CPU Cooler- ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler (in case I decide to vernture into overclocking)

The only thing I'm not 100% sure about it working is the RAM. I went to Gigabyte's website (manufacturer of the motherboard) and found the 'approved memory' section and G.SKILL was not on the list. I figured DDR2 800 RAM is all the same so I found the best deal and went with it....hopefully it wasn't a mistake. If it doesn't work, I suppose I'll return it to Newegg.com and see if I can get a different kind. I wanted to get one stick of 2GB RAM instead of two sticks of 1GB RAM, it makes for easier upgrades in the future if I ever decide to switch over to Windows Vista which supports over 2GB RAM.

I'll take the parts from my current computer and put them together with the new. Case with 400watt power supply, three internal IDE hard drives (7200rpm), a firewire PCI card, SONY DVD-ROM drive, Pioneer DVD+-RW drive, and a PCI IDE controller. The new motherboard only supports one IDE channel so I'll need to use the IDE controller card to run the DVD Drives and the other two hard drives. Eventually I'll switch over to SATA drives, but not yet. I'm doing only what I can afford at the moment.

All the parts should arrive on Friday. I'll let you know how it all went!

GoodSync

GoodSync (www.goodsync.com) is a great free little program that allows you to keep specific folders of computers on your network synchronized. I'd been looking for a program that would keep the 'My Pictures' folder up to date on our two home computers. That way when pictures are added on either computer, the other computer will have the same pictures automatically. I tried a few different programs but this was by far the best one. It is free, but you are pretty limited in the amount of data you synchronize. After only a few weeks of use, I was over the limit and needed to upgrade to the Pro version ($20), but totally worth it. I've also found it a very good way to back up files on your computer in case the hard drive ever dies. I just tell it to back up my 'Documents and Settings' folder anytime the computer is idle for more than 2 hours. Saves everything I need to a separate hard drive. This seems to work better than the NERO Back It Up program I've been using for a long time (version 6). NERO tends to hang for some reason, then you don't have an updated backup.

The nice thing about Goodsync versus NERO is that the files in Goodsync are always available. Basically you are making an identical copy of your folders to another location. With NERO, you need to use NERO to restore the files.

Fake TiVO

LRM-519 by LG. the coolest thing since TiVO. The biggest difference is that there are no monthly subscription fees, yet you get the most up to date TV listings for your area. It connects either to your telephone or your computer via Ethernet cable or USB wireless adapter. It goes to Microsoft's TV listing directory and downloads two weeks worth of listings. I've had some frustrations with it not always being able to connect to the internet, yet still be connected and visible to the network, I think that's an issue with my crappy D-Link router though.

It has DVD Burner built into it so you can burn your recorded programs right to DVD. You can also transfer the MPEG2 files to your computer and use a program like Tsunami MPEG Editor to edit out he commercials, then burn from your computer.

Like TiVO, you can tell it to record a specific TV show and it will record it whenever it's on, it doesn't just record a specific channel at a specific time like old style VCRs, although you can do that as well.

Since it is part of your computer network, you can play all your MP3s that live on your computer through your TV/Stereo. Same with JPEGs, but unfortunately no video clips. It works through Windows Media Player so whatever playlists you have set up on WIndows Media Player, the LRM-519 will see it and play your playlists, specific genres, full albums, specific artits, etc.

It records live TV for 90 minutes....even if you change channels. TiVo I think only does 30 minutes, and if you change the channel it erases what it already recorded. With the LRM-519 it keeps 90 minutes of whatever you were watching. So if you're watching channel 5, then switch to channel 7, then back to 5....you can rewind up to 90 minutes and watch it again. You can pause live TV if you get a phone call or interrupted somehow, then just hit play and pick up where you left off. You can then fast forward through the commercials and get caught up.

It's a great little device...more expensive than TiVO up front but you save in the long run on monthly subscription fees. It can record off of satellite, cable, rabbit ears....whatever!!

Things I like:
You can watch something you've recorded while recording something else
Live TV recording continues while watching a recorded program
Computer networking to play music and see JPEGs from your computer
Built in DVD Burner
74 hours of record time at best quality
Unlimited hard drive expandability via external USB hard drives (I haven't tried this yet)

Drawbacks to it:
You can only watch what you are recording, it doesn't have dual tuners to let you watch one thing live and record another
I wish it would play video clips off the computer
Has problems connecting to the internet (but that might be my router)

EMTAC GPS Navigator 3.0 Bundle for Palm TX

I've wanted to have GPS for a very long time. I finally found something that uses the super cool Palm TX as the display that connects wirelesly to a GPS receiver via BlueTooth. The EMTAC Navigator 3.0 Bundle comes with the BlueTooth GPS receiver and a pretty powerful piece of software including maps for each state in the United States (except Alaska and Hawaii for some reason).

If you are unfamiliar with GPS, here is what it is. GPS, abreviation for Global Positioning System, allows you to see exactly where you are on any GPS enabled map using three of 20 orbiting Satellites. The accuracy depends on the GPS receiver you have and the accuracy of the maps you are using. The EMTAC is rated accurate to 10 meters. The software allows you to see your current position, choose a destination, then the software will calculate the best or fastest route to that destination. Good software will recaclulate the route on the fly if you miss a turn.

The GPS receiver itself is very small, it fits easly in the palm of your hand....a bit smaller and flatter than a racketball ball. (I got the 'Mini' since the standard was out of stock). It comes with a wall charger and a car charger and takes only about an hour to fully charge. Once it is turned on, it can take a few minutes to get a lock on your position depending where the unit is located. I have had it zipped up in my camera bag on the passenger seat of the car and still get a lock. I find it easier to set it on the dashboard of the car to get a lock, then put it in my bag, in the glove compartment or in the armrest and not lose the signal. It connects via Bluetooth to the Palm so there's no extra cords to mess with.

One great thing about the Bluetooth connection is that you can set the screen where you can easly access it and put the receiver on the dashboard or in the glove box or wherever. Since the screen and receiver are separate you don't need to put the screen in a special place to get the best signal.

Since I have never used any GPS unit or software before, I have nothing to compare it to, but so far I really like EMTAC Navigator 3.0. The software is very customizable but has several quirky tricks that take a while to get used to. As far as customization, you can view your map in a top-down map style view or in a 3-D view which gives you a broader view of what's coming up. The map scales automatically based on your current speed and distance to next turn, which is really nice. The map is manually scalable using the hardware navigation buttons on the bottom of the TX in case you need a different scale that the current display. You can zoom in , out or even tilt when in 3-D mode. A simple press of a giant hand in the upper left corner gets you back to auto zoom mode.

The audible directions are great, although not street name specific. She will tell you when to turn left or right, but won't say the name of the street you are turning onto....for that you have to read the screen. But the voice is loud and crisp. You have control over the volume of the voice from within the software so if you are listening to music through the Palm at the same time, you can adjust the voice accordingly so it can still be heard through the music.

You can create a 'favorites' list which is extremely handy for places you may go frequently. I have Home and work stored so no matter where I am I can quickly find my way home without always typing in my address. It's also a good way to plan ahead for trips. Save your future destination as a favorite, then when you get in the car to go, you already have it saved.

Recently I typed in an address and followed the directions exactly to get there. Once I arrived, I found that it had taken me to the wrong place. From now on, if it's a place I've never been, I will cross reference the map location in EMTAC Navigator with Google Maps or Mapquest to be sure they all get the same results. It's kind of my fault though for not looking at the street signs as I was driving and only trusting the voice commands. Had I seen that the house numbers were getting bigger instead of smaller, I may have realized that I was going the wrong way.

It has the capabilities of looking up addresses from your contacts list, but I have had mixed results with that. Most of the time it just comes up blank when I try to use a contact. I've read that others have the same problem.

Another problem that I have found is when I'm in downtown Seattle in between all the tall buildings. Either the satellites can't see my exact position, or the map is off by 1/2 a block. When stopped at an intersection it will show that I am in between streets then will try to recalculate my route, most of the time indicating that I need to turn onto the street I'm already on. As long as I am moving it doesn't seem to be a big problem but when I stop every block for a stop light, it gets confused. I don't know if that would be the same for every major city, or just Seattle...you can always tell the software not to recalculate your route.

The maps come on a DVD and you can load only the ones you need onto the PALM or your expansion card. I like that because you're not wasting memory on a map of a state you'll never travel to. My 2GB card has a few surrounding state maps, favorite music and several videos on it with plenty of room to spare.

Overall I really really like this new toy. I use it far too frequently and especially when I don't need it at all. Like going to and from work....I already know how to get there, but it's kind of fun to see my current position on the map, my speed, average speed altitude, estimated time of arrival etc.

Things I like:
Clear audible directions so you don't have to always look at the display when driving
Big on-screen finger pushable buttons that don't require the use of the stylus
The ability to tell the software whether you want to take small back roads or the freeways
2-D and 3-D views
Favorites list
Bluetooth wireless connection to the GPS unit

Things I don't like:
No in depth user manual to tell you what ALL of the icons mean
Not pinpoint accurate in Downtown Seattle when stopped
Unable to accurately map contacts in the address book

It's a great price for software and GPS unit for the PALM TX. I like it better than the handheld all-in-one because it uses a nice big color display already on the PALM. Also, if you don't like the EMTAC software, you can still use the GPS receiver for any other PALM map software. Earthcomber is free, it won't give you turn by turn directions, but it can show you where you are on a map and show you restaurants, gas stations, ATMs, around you.

Earthcomber

I've had this program on my Palm TX for a very long time. I downloaded it when I was looking for Free Wi-Fi access points but was quickly overwhelmed and confused by it. It seemed as though things were not put in categories that made sense to me so I stopped using it and deleted it last week because the maps were so big. I have now re-installed the program and have been looking at the website a bit more closely now. I found that you can make your own lists and categorize thing exactly the way you want to.

Earthcomber is a Palm and Windows Mobile program that lets you (and anyone else who uses it) mark places on basic but pretty accurate maps. The information is then uploaded to the central server next time you sync the Palm and run the Earthcomber updater. This allows you to mark anything (gas stations, restaurants, Wi-Fi access points, stores, trails etc..) in your area so others can find them. Next time someone who uses Earthcomber is in my area, they can see anywhere there are ATMs, Gas Stations, Shopping centers, hotels, motels, pet food stores...ANYTHING.

The maps are big, so you'll definitely need a device with lots of on board memory available or some sort of add-on memory card. The Seattle map is just under 6MB, the Los Angeles map is 17MB, Chicago is about 10MB, and the New York map is just under 2MB. Earthcomber also supports GPS units so you can get an exact pinpoint of where you are on the map.

One big drawback to this program is if you ask it to give you directions, it requires an Internet connection. It's a bit strange since it already has the map on your handheld. But I suppose you could just look at the map and figure it out yourself if you have no Internet connection.

By the way....did I mention Earthcomber is completely FREE?