Re: [newbie] Graphical Log-in Problem
On Mon, 2003-09-08 at 20:21, crak600 wrote: On Monday 08 September 2003 11:21 am, ed tharp wrote: I think I see what you mean, and maybe, for you, a decoder might take some of the overhead from the CPU. I would see if I had something sharing the IRQ with the sound card tho. and see if moving the sound card might make some difference. what does, as root, in a text terminal cat /proc/interrupts say? cat /proc/interrupts CPU0 0: 26116823 XT-PIC timer 1: 342338 XT-PIC keyboard 2: 0 XT-PIC cascade 8: 5 XT-PIC rtc 10: 257731 XT-PIC usb-uhci, usb-uhci, eth0 11: 31266512 XT-PIC es1371 12:1788118 XT-PIC PS/2 Mouse 14: 230462 XT-PIC ide0 15: 521943 XT-PIC ide1 NMI: 0 LOC: 26116206 ERR: 30460 MIS: 0 what would be sharing on this? Mike nothing, execpt I don't see an interrupt for the video card. I don't have the origanal post any longer, but if you have a video card that has more than 4 megs video mem, and is not onboard sharing memory, and is agp or PCI, maybe in the bios you can set something that will provide an irq for video?? __ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com -- ++ Mandrake HowTo's More: http://twiki.mdklinuxfaq.org Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Graphical Log-in Problem
On Sunday 07 September 2003 09:18 pm, crak600 wrote: hmm, i'll have to hunt for it, never seen it before. i havn't had to ever tell it anything except which order to boot devices, and i've added quite a few things since i got this computer. i'll look for it and check it out the next time i reboot. my last video card was also 32mb, so it should be set right, but i'll double check to make sure. Look for AGP aperature. My Soyo Dragon, older Soyo and Shuttle MBs all have it in BIOS. -- /\ DarkLord \/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Graphical Log-in Problem
On Monday 08 September 2003 11:21 am, ed tharp wrote: I think I see what you mean, and maybe, for you, a decoder might take some of the overhead from the CPU. I would see if I had something sharing the IRQ with the sound card tho. and see if moving the sound card might make some difference. what does, as root, in a text terminal cat /proc/interrupts say? cat /proc/interrupts CPU0 0: 26116823 XT-PIC timer 1: 342338 XT-PIC keyboard 2: 0 XT-PIC cascade 8: 5 XT-PIC rtc 10: 257731 XT-PIC usb-uhci, usb-uhci, eth0 11: 31266512 XT-PIC es1371 12:1788118 XT-PIC PS/2 Mouse 14: 230462 XT-PIC ide0 15: 521943 XT-PIC ide1 NMI: 0 LOC: 26116206 ERR: 30460 MIS: 0 what would be sharing on this? Mike Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Graphical Log-in Problem
On Saturday 06 September 2003 05:56 pm, Tom Brinkman wrote: I'm a little fuzzy on just what your video problems are. If you inherited the GeF card on a screwed mobo, it could just be that the card is compromised also. I believe I'd boot to lilo, an hit Esc, then, 'linux init 3 mem=860M' (check you current lilo.conf, you might need to add other parameters, eg, acpi=off) and as root run 'XFdrake'. Choose conservative video card an monitor settings to get started with. Probly 1024x768 @ 60Hz, 30-70 kHz HorizSync 50-120 Hz VertRefresh. 'lspcidrake' and 'ddcxinfos' will tell you which video card you have, and what your monitor specs are (HorizSync, VertRefresh) if the hardware has this info imbedded in it's firmware. There's another utility that reports onboard video ram, but for the life of me I can't remember what it is. If anyone knows what it is, please chime in. i have no specs on this card other than what the manufacturer's web site says. Vram shouldn't be a problem for configuring the Vcard an monitor tho. As to 'old' stanza's in lilo.conf, just delete them, an run 'lilo'. I believe MCC has a GUI for doin it too. If your /boot partition is gettin full, carefully delete old images (vmlinuz) an initrd's. They're the only files that use a lot of disk space, the links (system.map, config*, etc.) you can leave (or delete). Just be careful. If you have a spare partition to back up to, it's probly a good idea to backup /boot before you try any deleting. ok, i'll give this stuff a shot, except the deleting files stuff, i'll get to that later. i'm not too worried about hard drive space, as when i did the install i gave mdk almost 15Gb and split it right down the middle into / and /home, and i rarely use /home to save my stuff to, but i'll keep all the deleting stuff in mind for the future. all the 'old' linux things on the lilo screen are because i re-installed in order to get back into mdk. i knew i wouldn't lose all my settings if i just did a re-install. however, it's the 'old' ones that i screwed up royally. so just go ahead and delete them out and then update the 'new' stuff online for security and bug fixes and what not? since i'm in linux i can use the GUI to try to change the screen resolution and refresh and rates and all that instead of going into the command line. yes, i like the GUI for some things, command line for others. hey, i'm a new 'convert', command line is totally new to me, while i'm not afraid to use it, when dealing with multiple option settings (like all the stuff that can be done to the montier settings) i'd prefer the GUI. thanks, i'll see how this all goes. Mike Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Graphical Log-in Problem
On Sunday September 7 2003 01:24 pm, crak600 wrote: 'lspcidrake' and 'ddcxinfos' will tell you which video card you have, and what your monitor specs are (HorizSync, VertRefresh) if the hardware has this info imbedded in it's firmware. There's another utility that reports onboard video ram, but for the life of me I can't remember what it is. Vram shouldn't be a problem for configuring the Vcard an monitor tho. as root in a terminal, 'ddcxinfos' will tell you the video card ram size. Yep, I knew I'd seen it somewhere ;) just ran it, so that's how i know. sadly, this NVidia GeForce2 card is only a 32mb card, the same as the NVidia RIVA TNT2 i took out, but i can tell a visual difference between the cards. the images on the screen with the GeF2 card are much clearer, sharper, have more depth to them. everything looks better. MUCH better. and i didn't think it was bad to begin with. 32mb is plenty. Set the aperature to 32 also. You'll never need more than that. Most of the time you're only usin about 4mb of video ram, even at the resolutions you mentioned I snipped. A lot of onboard video ram is mostly a marketing gimmick. now that i'm in the GUI and can see all this, in the GUI it's showing that i'm using the RIVA TNT2 card still and says i'm using a plug'n play moniter, although in a terminal it's showing that i'm using the GeF2 card. should i be concerned with this? the command line makes me 'god' to the computer and i would think any info i got from a terminal would be more correct than info gotten from a GUI. is that right? I dunno, I've never had that happen, and I have changed video cards before. I wouldn't worry about it tho. Probly an artifact left from an upgrade, rather than a fresh install. going back up to the first paragraph in your reply Tom, do i need to do all that now considering i'm 'in' mandrake now anyway? or should i just skip it and do as stated below, delete the 'old' stuff from lilo and do all my updates to the 'new' install and just forge on? Sounds like all you've got left to do is get rid of the 'old' stanzas in lilo.conf. Actually you could'a removed them during the upgrade usin the installer's tool. Now just edit lilo.conf, delete them an re-run lilo. I believe you can also do this with a GUI in MCC. As to 'old' stanza's in lilo.conf, just delete them, an run 'lilo'. I believe MCC has a GUI for doin it too. If your /boot partition is gettin full, carefully delete old images (vmlinuz) an initrd's. They're the only files that use a lot of disk space, the links (system.map, config*, etc.) you can leave (or delete). Just be careful. If you have a spare partition to back up to, it's probly a good idea to backup /boot before you try any deleting. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Graphical Log-in Problem
On Sunday 07 September 2003 08:07 pm, Tom Brinkman wrote: big snips of my mistakes and corrections for them 32mb is plenty. Set the aperature to 32 also. You'll never need more than that. Most of the time you're only usin about 4mb of video ram, even at the resolutions you mentioned I snipped. A lot of onboard video ram is mostly a marketing gimmick. set what aperature? i might be getting more experimental with video here as i go on. since i've got the DVD drive now, i was talking to a friend about a DVD Decoder card, as it will take the processing strain off the processor and give me more head room there. using mplayer for DVD playback, my processor jumps from 60% useage all the way to 90% at times during playback. never below 60% during DVD playing, and i'm running an AMD 950MHz Slot A processor. if i start composing an e-mail or doing extensive surfing at the same time, i'll hit 100% processor use and the video playback will start to get choppy, but the sound chugs along just fine most of the time. so getting something in there to take some strain off the processor would be nice, and might even make the graphics better during DVD playback. I dunno, I've never had that happen, and I have changed video cards before. I wouldn't worry about it tho. Probly an artifact left from an upgrade, rather than a fresh install. ok, won't worry about it. Sounds like all you've got left to do is get rid of the 'old' stanzas in lilo.conf. Actually you could'a removed them during the upgrade usin the installer's tool. Now just edit lilo.conf, delete them an re-run lilo. I believe you can also do this with a GUI in MCC. ok, will do. thanks a lot Tom, the help is greatly appreciated. i know i can get to it through the MCC GUI, as i removed 'windows 2' from lilo that way. 'windows 2' was my 2nd hard drive, which has no operating system on it, so it was not needed in any way shape or form in the lilo. once again, thanks for your help. hopefully i can get it all right this time and can soon just post a quick 'update' that all issues are resolved and i'm back on track. :) Mike Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Graphical Log-in Problem
On Sun, 2003-09-07 at 16:17, crak600 wrote: On Sunday 07 September 2003 08:07 pm, Tom Brinkman wrote: big snips of my mistakes and corrections for them 32mb is plenty. Set the aperature to 32 also. You'll never need more than that. Most of the time you're only usin about 4mb of video ram, even at the resolutions you mentioned I snipped. A lot of onboard video ram is mostly a marketing gimmick. set what aperature? this is a BIOS setting i might be getting more experimental with video here as i go on. since i've got the DVD drive now, i was talking to a friend about a DVD Decoder card, as it will take the processing strain off the processor and give me more head room there. if your computer CPU is better than 800MGz, a dvd decoder card is a waste, unless you intend to burn a cd in one drive and watch a dvd in a different drive, Just my opinion there. using mplayer for DVD playback, my processor jumps from 60% useage all the way to 90% at times during playback. never below 60% during DVD playing, and i'm running an AMD 950MHz Slot A processor. if i start composing an e-mail or doing extensive surfing at the same time, i'll hit 100% processor use and the video playback will start to get choppy, but the sound chugs along just fine most of the time. so getting something in there to take some strain off the processor would be nice, and might even make the graphics better during DVD playback. how much memory do you have that 800mhz was figuring 512 meg mem. I dunno, I've never had that happen, and I have changed video cards before. I wouldn't worry about it tho. Probly an artifact left from an upgrade, rather than a fresh install. ok, won't worry about it. Sounds like all you've got left to do is get rid of the 'old' stanzas in lilo.conf. Actually you could'a removed them during the upgrade usin the installer's tool. Now just edit lilo.conf, delete them an re-run lilo. I believe you can also do this with a GUI in MCC. ok, will do. thanks a lot Tom, the help is greatly appreciated. i know i can get to it through the MCC GUI, as i removed 'windows 2' from lilo that way. 'windows 2' was my 2nd hard drive, which has no operating system on it, so it was not needed in any way shape or form in the lilo. once again, thanks for your help. hopefully i can get it all right this time and can soon just post a quick 'update' that all issues are resolved and i'm back on track. :) Mike __ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com -- ++ Mandrake HowTo's More: http://twiki.mdklinuxfaq.org Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Graphical Log-in Problem
crak600 wrote: ok, i should be shot. i will try to defend myself later after i discribe what i did. i still don't know why. i re-installed, i didn't delete out anything, i told it to 'upgrade' to essentially what i already had, MDK9.1. why i did this, well, i was playing around in MCC after i sent the last e-mail to the list, found the area to set up how the system boots. great! this should work good. and i swear the ONLY thing i changed was telling it how much ram i have, as i just added 2 new sticks and put the system from 768 to 1024mb, but (DOH!) i entered the wrong number, i thin i put 1084mb in there. so when i went to reboot, i couldn't get in AT ALL. said something about vga/mem needed a value or something like that. i absolutely had no clue what i was doing, and i really did NOT want to boot into win98. that's how much i don't want to use it, that i'm willing to screw up the whole mdk install and have to format it out and start over from nothing. luckily, the only thing saved on my /home is my e-mail (i'm using kmail, can someone tell me how to get it to save to another partition, like one on my 2nd hard drive so i don't lose everything) and my bookmarks in mozilla. so i wouldn't lose anythign important at least, everything is saved on a 2nd hard drive that's a FAT32 file type. so what do i do now? i swear i will not touch another thing until someone tells me what i need to do. honest. this time i won't decide to forge on w/out a clue about what i'm doing. if i need to supply more info, let me know, i'll be more than happy to dig it up. thanks. Mike The Error Lies Between The Keyboard And The Chair why i got so dumb with the computer tonight i'm exhausted. i just finished my 2nd week of college, i havn't been in for 7 years and i'm on freshman level. i started hitting the gym again after maybe a 5 year absence, so not only am i mentally exhausted, but i'm physically exhausted, and strained a muscle in my neck last friday (not in the gym, thankfully), recovered very quickly, and was in the gym again this past week, even though i probably shouldn't of been, it is still a little tender. so yeah, physically and mentally exhausted and drained. my bios is giving me slight problems right now, i really don't to play with it and i have a friend who kicks ass with hardware, i'll get him to tell me how to fix it. i spent a few hours earlier this evening trying to get a 2nd computer up and running, only to find out that the motherboard is pretty much fried, but that's ok, the wife picked it up for $5 and i got a good hard drive (too bad my motherboard is IDE and so are all 3 hard drives, cause i don't have room for a 3rd hard drive, running CD-RW and DVD drives), DVD ROM drive, 4 sticks of ram (2 of them 256mb, which i plugged into this computer earlier tonight), a better NVIDIA video card, a Creative MIDI drive (dunno if it works, don't know if i'll ever have a use for it), another ethernet card (which i will test soon to see if it is good, wouldn't mind a spare one of those either), and an HP 14GB tape drive, but no tapes (oh well, don't really have a use for it). plus another case and power supply, both of which are good. essentially, all i need to build a 2nd computer now is a motherboard (that runs PC133 sdram), processor (the processor in the dead board might still be good though), floppy drive, sound card, and a CD-RW drive. but what does this have to do with my problem? after being so exhausted from the past 2 weeks, from the time i came home from school today until about 30 minutes ago all i have been doing is playing with the computers. so i've been messing with the comptuers for about 8 hours now, with a few breaks, but still.. i should go to bed. i'm rambling and my dogs are wondering why i'm talking while i type, like i'm holding a conversation with the computer. make a joke about all this, i don't care, unless it's a bad joke. i can handle a joke, but bad jokes just shouldn't be told, they're just not funny. they're disappointing. make a good joke, i could use a laugh. Did you install a kernel capable of using that much memory when you did your upgrade? I believe you need to do the initial install with the standard kernel and then, afterwards, you can install the Enterprise Kernel to take advantage of the extra RAM. You need to specify a lower amount of RAM to do the initial install or it will not work. Once you have upgraded the kernel you can then specify the new (larger) amount of RAM, re-install your nVidia drivers, if that is what you used, and you're off to the races. If I am incorrect in any way I'm sure someone will let me know. Good Luck. -- Brant Fitzsimmons [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Linux user #322847 | Linux machine #207465 | http://counter.li.org/ AMD Duron 1.3GHz | Mandrake 9.1 | Kernel
Re: [newbie] Graphical Log-in Problem
On Saturday September 6 2003 01:20 am, Brant Fitzsimmons wrote: Did you install a kernel capable of using that much memory when you did your upgrade? I believe you need to do the initial install with the standard kernel and then, afterwards, you can install the Enterprise Kernel to take advantage of the extra RAM. You need to specify a lower amount of RAM to do the initial install or it will not work. Once you have upgraded the kernel you can then specify the new (larger) amount of RAM, re-install your nVidia drivers, if that is what you used, and you're off to the races. Same thing I was wonderin. With 1 gig of ram I believe he'd be better off keeping the UP kernel and adding 'mem=860M' to lilo, or booting with 'linux mem=860M'. There's a significant memory management performance hit in the BigMem (enterprise) kernels in order to provide addressing = 4gig's of ram. I have an nvidia GeF2, but use the XFree86 driver. IIRC, there's issues with nvidia's proprietary driver and = 1 gig of ram and/or the bigmem kernels. I think the mem=860 restriction with the UP kernel would eliminate those problems too (if they still exist?). -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Graphical Log-in Problem
On Saturday 06 September 2003 03:17 pm, Tom Brinkman wrote: On Saturday September 6 2003 01:20 am, Brant Fitzsimmons wrote: Did you install a kernel capable of using that much memory when you did your upgrade? I believe you need to do the initial install with the standard kernel and then, afterwards, you can install the Enterprise Kernel to take advantage of the extra RAM. You need to specify a lower amount of RAM to do the initial install or it will not work. Once you have upgraded the kernel you can then specify the new (larger) amount of RAM, re-install your nVidia drivers, if that is what you used, and you're off to the races. Same thing I was wonderin. With 1 gig of ram I believe he'd be better off keeping the UP kernel and adding 'mem=860M' to lilo, or booting with 'linux mem=860M'. There's a significant memory management performance hit in the BigMem (enterprise) kernels in order to provide addressing = 4gig's of ram. i remember reading that somewhere that something needed to be addressed in order to run over a certain figure of ram, but when i was playing around with it, it started downloading something, and i assumed it was a kernel patch or something to handle the higher amount of memory. yes, i assumed. hell, half the time i just assume what it's downloading is what i need, and so far i havn't had any problems. until now, of course. I have an nvidia GeF2, but use the XFree86 driver. IIRC, there's issues with nvidia's proprietary driver and = 1 gig of ram and/or the bigmem kernels. I think the mem=860 restriction with the UP kernel would eliminate those problems too (if they still exist?). well, i'll keep that driver in mind for the nvidia GeF2 card and i'll give it a try later, although right now, i have seen a noticable change in my screen image when i pulled the RIVA card and put the GeF2 card in. i have no clue what the capabilities of the card are either, as i didn't buy it, it came inside a comp case that had a bad motherboard. NVIDIA tech support couldn't even tell me, other than to just check the specs on their website, so as far as i know, it could only be a 32Mb card or it could be a 64mb or 128mb, i have no clue. so anyway, how do i fix my screwups? the lilo screen now has all the regular options plus the old linux, old linux-nonfb, old linux failsafe, which those are the ones that i can't get anywhere in. do i just forge onward and remove those things from lilo.conf or can i fix what i screwed up? thanks! Mike Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Graphical Log-in Problem
On Saturday September 6 2003 10:34 am, crak600 wrote: so anyway, how do i fix my screwups? the lilo screen now has all the regular options plus the old linux, old linux-nonfb, old linux failsafe, which those are the ones that i can't get anywhere in. do i just forge onward and remove those things from lilo.conf or can i fix what i screwed up? thanks! Mike I'm a little fuzzy on just what your video problems are. If you inherited the GeF card on a screwed mobo, it could just be that the card is compromised also. I believe I'd boot to lilo, an hit Esc, then, 'linux init 3 mem=860M' (check you current lilo.conf, you might need to add other parameters, eg, acpi=off) and as root run 'XFdrake'. Choose conservative video card an monitor settings to get started with. Probly 1024x768 @ 60Hz, 30-70 kHz HorizSync 50-120 Hz VertRefresh. 'lspcidrake' and 'ddcxinfos' will tell you which video card you have, and what your monitor specs are (HorizSync, VertRefresh) if the hardware has this info imbedded in it's firmware. There's another utility that reports onboard video ram, but for the life of me I can't remember what it is. Vram shouldn't be a problem for configuring the Vcard an monitor tho. As to 'old' stanza's in lilo.conf, just delete them, an run 'lilo'. I believe MCC has a GUI for doin it too. If your /boot partition is gettin full, carefully delete old images (vmlinuz) an initrd's. They're the only files that use a lot of disk space, the links (system.map, config*, etc.) you can leave (or delete). Just be careful. If you have a spare partition to back up to, it's probly a good idea to backup /boot before you try any deleting. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[newbie] Graphical Log-in Problem
i opened up the comp to take the NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 card out and replace it with an NVIDIA GeFORCE2 MX200. now that i'm in linux, i can see a noticible difference in the clarity and crispness of things on the screen, and i havn't even tried playing DVDs yet. but the key words in the above sentence.'now that i'm in linux'. upon firing the computer back up, i went chose linux at the lilo screen. it detected new hardware and the removal of hardware, and i went and configured it right there. i guess that was my mistake. i let it test itself, it eventually put me to a black screen at the command line asking for a log-in. once i halted the system, i booted back in again, chose linux again, and after a it booted up, it went back to the same black screen. linun-nonfb does this too. i am only able to get into the graphical desktop by using 'failsafe' and i have to choose that i want to enter in a graphical mode and enter the root password so the INIT runlevel will go from 3 to 5 to let me into the system (at least that's what i notice it does while things are scrolling up the screen). so anyway how do i fix this? i'd like to be able to get into the system normally when the computer sees a reboot every week or so, for whatever reason it may be, gotta love it, full week w/out reboot and even then it's not because of problems...i'll never be a regular ms-windows user again. ok, that's getting off topic so yeah, how do i fix this? help greatly appreciated. thanks. Mike Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Graphical Log-in Problem
ok, i should be shot. i will try to defend myself later after i discribe what i did. i still don't know why. i re-installed, i didn't delete out anything, i told it to 'upgrade' to essentially what i already had, MDK9.1. why i did this, well, i was playing around in MCC after i sent the last e-mail to the list, found the area to set up how the system boots. great! this should work good. and i swear the ONLY thing i changed was telling it how much ram i have, as i just added 2 new sticks and put the system from 768 to 1024mb, but (DOH!) i entered the wrong number, i thin i put 1084mb in there. so when i went to reboot, i couldn't get in AT ALL. said something about vga/mem needed a value or something like that. i absolutely had no clue what i was doing, and i really did NOT want to boot into win98. that's how much i don't want to use it, that i'm willing to screw up the whole mdk install and have to format it out and start over from nothing. luckily, the only thing saved on my /home is my e-mail (i'm using kmail, can someone tell me how to get it to save to another partition, like one on my 2nd hard drive so i don't lose everything) and my bookmarks in mozilla. so i wouldn't lose anythign important at least, everything is saved on a 2nd hard drive that's a FAT32 file type. so what do i do now? i swear i will not touch another thing until someone tells me what i need to do. honest. this time i won't decide to forge on w/out a clue about what i'm doing. if i need to supply more info, let me know, i'll be more than happy to dig it up. thanks. Mike The Error Lies Between The Keyboard And The Chair why i got so dumb with the computer tonight i'm exhausted. i just finished my 2nd week of college, i havn't been in for 7 years and i'm on freshman level. i started hitting the gym again after maybe a 5 year absence, so not only am i mentally exhausted, but i'm physically exhausted, and strained a muscle in my neck last friday (not in the gym, thankfully), recovered very quickly, and was in the gym again this past week, even though i probably shouldn't of been, it is still a little tender. so yeah, physically and mentally exhausted and drained. my bios is giving me slight problems right now, i really don't to play with it and i have a friend who kicks ass with hardware, i'll get him to tell me how to fix it. i spent a few hours earlier this evening trying to get a 2nd computer up and running, only to find out that the motherboard is pretty much fried, but that's ok, the wife picked it up for $5 and i got a good hard drive (too bad my motherboard is IDE and so are all 3 hard drives, cause i don't have room for a 3rd hard drive, running CD-RW and DVD drives), DVD ROM drive, 4 sticks of ram (2 of them 256mb, which i plugged into this computer earlier tonight), a better NVIDIA video card, a Creative MIDI drive (dunno if it works, don't know if i'll ever have a use for it), another ethernet card (which i will test soon to see if it is good, wouldn't mind a spare one of those either), and an HP 14GB tape drive, but no tapes (oh well, don't really have a use for it). plus another case and power supply, both of which are good. essentially, all i need to build a 2nd computer now is a motherboard (that runs PC133 sdram), processor (the processor in the dead board might still be good though), floppy drive, sound card, and a CD-RW drive. but what does this have to do with my problem? after being so exhausted from the past 2 weeks, from the time i came home from school today until about 30 minutes ago all i have been doing is playing with the computers. so i've been messing with the comptuers for about 8 hours now, with a few breaks, but still.. i should go to bed. i'm rambling and my dogs are wondering why i'm talking while i type, like i'm holding a conversation with the computer. make a joke about all this, i don't care, unless it's a bad joke. i can handle a joke, but bad jokes just shouldn't be told, they're just not funny. they're disappointing. make a good joke, i could use a laugh. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
