Computers, Gadgets, Etc.

(Nov. 26, 2011  4:00 PM)Codeine Extorts Wrote: I always wanted a commodore for my game collection.
Oh and nice find dude.

Thanks. Plus, I happen to have an old Commodore 64 in my room, with the original box
Hasbro has sued Asus over their tablets. Asus has a tablet called "Transformer Prime" - they were seriously asking to be sued with a name like that given the association of those 2 words almost always leads back to Hasbro. Not to forget the whole, Transformers Prime TV series that debuted last year...
LOL, that's so funny. How did they not think that they'd get sued? That is a horrible name for a tablet, anyway. Who wants a tablet that sounds like a kids toy?
UHEIUFHIWUEHIEUHIHQWIDGIU my alienware m14x got a black screen and beeped so i called dell and they sent someone to replace the motherboard... turned out it needed to be charged so he didnt replace and now a few day later its making 7 beeps which is beep code for motherboard/cpu error and now im MAD cuz ive had this for about 3 weeks. any idea on what to do?
Call Dell again, or replace the board yourself. If you use the same board, all the drivers will be the same and you won't have any compatability issues. I've done it a bunch of times.
Have you guys seen those 3D printers? The first one I saw, on the Internet awbviusslee, was about last summer, and I just saw one again today. It's pretty cool, my only wonder is how the material compares to the original object. The video I saw was of people making a wrench, and it actually worked without breaking, which surprised me. They could even change the colours and stuff.
3D printing technology currently threatens to overthrow a lot of previous methods of obtaining many things, and it's overall just fascinating stuff in general. Obviously there will be discrepancies, but the tech is endlessly useful for almost every single type of manufacturing position - and for things like architexture and toy making, it's just invaluable.
(Jan. 25, 2012  6:30 AM)Shabalabadoo Wrote: Have you guys seen those 3D printers? The first one I saw, on the Internet awbviusslee, was about last summer, and I just saw one again today. It's pretty cool, my only wonder is how the material compares to the original object. The video I saw was of people making a wrench, and it actually worked without breaking, which surprised me. They could even change the colours and stuff.

i saw that too, it is really cool. some of the complex objects you can make with it is just awesome (even just that wrench working is awesome to me)
bet you can guess what i thought of doing with it first haha

Hahahahaha, I never even thought of that lord Wolfblade! How would they make them so people don't make Beyblade's illegally? It seems like it would suck quite a bit for some companies.

It makes me wonder: in 20 years, will where we are at now with these printers seem like old technology?
Yup. The widespread availability of 3-D printers (rapid prototyping machines) will eventually do to the physical goods market what Napster and BiTorrent have done to the music and film industries - radically drive down costs until they are very close to the level of acquiring the raw materials themselves.

Today we live in a world where information wants to be free. Tomorrow we will live in a world where most physical goods want to be free as well.
1gb left Tired i need to ask my dad to but 1 terrabyte for all of us anyways why is our other PC have Mac OS but it isnt a Mac?
(Jan. 25, 2012  1:58 PM)Arupaeo Wrote: Yup. The widespread availability of 3-D printers (rapid prototyping machines) will eventually do to the physical goods market what Napster and BiTorrent have done to the music and film industries - radically drive down costs until they are very close to the level of acquiring the raw materials themselves.

Today we live in a world where information wants to be free. Tomorrow we will live in a world where most physical goods want to be free as well.

Wait, so does that mean there's a possibility that they could make food that is safe to eat?

Solving world hunger anyone?
There is no current way that it would be more cost efficient to print food(since it'd basically just be shaped edible material - which you could just eat instead of shaping), and I do not see that one changing at all.
You'd need some alchemy skills to turn plastic into food, not a 3D-printer.
Right, so I accidentally punched my laptop's hard drive out of frustration today, and I broke it. Now I have to a) hope I can make a decent backup because I am a terrible procrastinator and as such haven't made one recently, and b) buy a new HDD (and I'm running low on money so that's bad).

Oops.

Anyway, I've managed to get it starting up, but it's not in a good state. Hopefully I can use windows "system image" backup thing and make a usable backup and repair the installation or whatever when I get the new HDD (which will be hard because I can't find my Windows 7 disk right now), otherwise I'm going to have to mount it in the family computer and try to get what I can off it there (give or take some time in a snap lock bag in the freezer to get it running a little better).

Oh, and nowhere nearby has any laptop HDD's of sufficient specs at a decent price (as in not double what the exact same HDD cost me last year what the hell guys?), and seeing as I can't drive, I need to convince someone to drive me a fair way away to get one any time soon, unless my uncle has one lying around somewhere. :\

So yeah that was kind of dumb/stereotypically ginger of me. In my defence, my HDD has been on its last legs for the better part of 6 months now, so I really just gave myself a reason to replace it finally, I just wish I'd made a good backup first.

Oh yeah, and my phone line is crackly again so my internet is cutting in and out. Gotta call the phone company on monday, go through all the checks I've already done, and then get them to send out a tech whenever they feel like it.
HDD prices have gone up due to floods in Thailand. That's left me with a 250GB laptop hard drive for way too long. I want to drop a 1TB in this thing, or at least grab a 1TB portable one.
Yeah, I've worked that out now Tongue_out

Off to buy a new one on monday, found a store relatively nearby that has the same model as mine in stock (and given the hits that thing survived in its time, and just how long it hung on towards the end there, AND the fact it looks like I will still be able to salvage my data even in the terrible state it is in, I am happy enough to buy the same again. Also helps that it's the cheapest 320gb 7200RPM 2.5" drive that has some measure of shock absorption).

Also, is it just me or has HDD technology just paused for the last couple of years?

Anyway, slowly recovering my data. I opened up an external HDD, stuck my damaged HDD in that, connected it to my family's main computer, found a salvaging program that has managed to locate my User/username/ folder, which was basically the only area of the entire HDD that was damaged. The one where I keep everything important. My hit's timing must have been spectacular.

Anyway, slowly saving everything off there, hopefully nothing too major will be lost. Gonna have to try to find my Windows 7 Disk now though, which will be tough because I lost it shortly after W7 came out.

Still haven't answered my question. Why is does our PC have a Mac OS but it's not a Mac? 197 mb left T_T my dad wont but me a 1TB hard drive till April Tired i'm screwed.
In order for the Mac OS to be installed it looks for a particular set of instructions that are only found within compatible processors. You can't install Mac OS on just any old PC - it just won't work.

That being said, there have been several third party manufacturers over the years that have produced internal PCI cards or external dongles that include a specialty chip with the instruction set embedded within the hardware. This hardware fools the Mac OS into thinking that your PC is really a Mac so that the OS will install.

If you have a PC that runs the Mac OS, it is likely that this is how.
It LIVES! My laptop, that is. I ended up restoring to an old backup from 2010, seeing as I have been very lax with backups. Reinstalling and moving back what I can, but the good thing is that it's all working very smoothly. I tried a fresh start but had some driver issues, but this backup was a pretty fresh one, so no real harm, though it was tough remembering my old password, as I removed it not long after I made the backup, hah.
This is on the new hard drive you bought? Very nice.

You should be able to mount the old hard drive as a secondary drive and pull off any of the more recent configuration/app info on there at your leisure. (For the bits that can be recovered that is)

This may cause some BSOD from time to time, because even if the new OS installation doesn't mark the old HD as a boot disk, the old HD still thinks it is... but it is still well worth pursuing.
Yep, and it's running real smooth. My old one was on its last legs for ages, from various knocks and bumps. Went into the store today, was like "yeah, I need this HDD, I punched mine and it didn't like it very much", had a mildly amusing conversation and off I went.

Also, my uncle gave me a 1tb external hard drive to encourage me to back up again in future, and I might be getting a real nice laptop that has a minor hardware fault that'll cost $200 to fix. I always feel guilty because I know he must be paying for this stuff even if it is discounted, but seeing as he has no kids of his own, I will find a way to make it up to him in future, I figure.

I already pulled off most of what I could (by opening up my older external hdd and swapping the broken drive in, and then using a recovery program). My chrome user settings survived which was nice, as did all the drafts I'm working on for plastics (poor Kei), and most of my guitar tabs and lyrics. The main things that were damaged were larger files, and all my media files, which happened last time my hard drive died too. Most of my music was still in the old backup, or on my phone, which contains my entire regular playlist, so no big. But, I did lose all 3 seasons of (the English dub of) bakuten shoot, the star wars holiday special (that took about a year to download, and was hard enough to find in the first place), the entire collection of Oggy and the Cockroaches, and a bunch of other shows. Those are going to be a real pain to get back, seeing as I've already burnt through a lot of my monthly download limit (West Australian internet is some of the slowest and most expensive of any first-world location).

I will make a new backup once I've weeded out the broken files that slipped through initially, ahah, and try to make it a habit.
I occasionally back up stuff I think is important on my WD Passport 300gb portable HD... the write speed on it is kind of disappointing(moving 80~gb takes just shy of 70 minutes), but it's really small and simple to use... I've contemplated trying to get one that writes faster just so I'll be encouraged to back up more often, but I'm not really out to drop so much money on it, either.
All of my computers run in RAID 1, so they are automatically mirrored and always backed up in case 1 drive fails. Each drive pair is made up of drives from two different batches or different manufacturers so that the likelihood of simultaneous failure is very, very low.

My laptops get backed up over WiFi 3 times a week using Norton Ghost with no compression to another RAID 1 array attached to my media server.