Battered Woman Syndrome

In trying to procure a replacement sound card for my Windows 7 machine, I didn't have a lot of requirements.  Other than it should be as good as or better than my Audigy, it should be inexpensive, it should have a pcie interface, and preferably NOT a creative card.

 But when a Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium showed up in the refurbished section of Newegg, and with a promotion code for 20% off putting it at $36...I couldn't pass it up.  Despite being a Creative Product.

I get to keep most of the features and specifications that my Audigy had (although apparently you cannot get a sound card with DTS and DD hardware decoders anymore...some law somewhere that it must be done with software, although I didn't honestly spend enough time to verify this claim.)  I eventually decided I wanted to connect my HD front audtio, and my 5.1 analog speakers to the card.  This does that.  It also supports EAX and positional audio for gaming.  So it had what I wanted, familiar (for better or worse) softwares, and for $36 bucks, I'd let Creative beat me again.

The only thing I need now is this in order to plug my Sennheiser HD555 headphones into my computers.  (Since I don't have a 1/4" jack anymore...)

NUKE!

In trying to liquidate some of my hardware, I was faced with the challenge of how to wipe my hard drives I want to get rid of.  You see, even formatting the drive will leave information on it.  Granted it takes more than just slapping it in a computer to read the files, but people bent on getting your personal information are resourceful to say the least.  I've heard of people trolling garage sales, second hand stores, and even dumpster diving for computers to pull personal information off of.

It was along these lines that I came across another useful Linux distribution:

Darik's Boot and Nuke

Download the iso from sourceforge (I had to use version 1.07 for it to work) and boot from the burned CD.  It will detect any hard drive you have installed on the computer and wipe it with DOD level wiping:  meaning it will be near impossible to recover any data from it once it's wiped.

So be sure to take care of your identity and wipe your computers before disposing of them.  In the same respect, make sure there's nothing on it that you want to keep.  You won't get it back if you use this program.

Hardware for sale...Make offer

With all of this going on, I also managed to pick up DCS A-10C Warthog on Steam for $20 for Christmas.  Very nice.  It goes well with my CH Products Fighter Stick, Pro Throttle, and Pro Pedals.  The only downside:  my HD 4850 couldn't manage it on 3840 x 1024 resolution.  That's right:  triple 1280x1024 monitors.  So subsequently for my birthday I picked up a HIS IceQ Turbo Radeon HD 6970 2GB which managed the game just fine.  (Although, I admit, it seems a bit silly to spend $300 on a video card to play a $20 game.)  At any rate it's a really great card.  Except for the fact that it takes up 3 slots in my case, blocking the 2 pci slots below the pcie slot it's plugged into.

Super.

This simply means I was forced to evict my Audigy 2 zs Platinum Pro sound card.  It was bittersweet:  I was finally able to move on from Creative.  Yet, it's still a great card with a lot of capability and life left in it.

That being said, with all this new hardware I've purchased, I've got some stuff up for grabs if you want to make an offer.  Here's what I'm willing to part with:

Audigy 2zs Platinum Pro (Complete)
VisionTek HD 4850 (PCIe)
MSI RX9800PRO-TD128 Radeon 9800PRO 128MB 256-bit DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card
Dell 8960 ATI X300 (PCIe)
Hynix 2x1 GB PC3 10600S Laptop RAM
Rosewill RC-400-LX Network Adapter
Thrustmaster Firestorm Dual Analog Controller
256 MB PC3200 400MHz DDR ram
Samsung LTN154AT09 LCD Screen for Laptop

In addition to all of that I have various Hard Drives:

Quantum Fireball ATA66 15GB Hard Drive
Maxtor ATA100 15GB Hard Drive
Seagate 40GB IDE Drive
Hitachi 60 GB IDE Drive
Seagate 160 GB IDE Drive
Samsung 500 GB SATA I/II Drive

I'm also willing to part with my wife's computer (CHEAP!).  With it, I'll throw in your choice of up to 2 IDE drive(s) and install (and give you the install disc and product key for) Windows XP Pro.

Everyday I'm Shufflin'

It's been a while since I've updated my blog, so I've got a lot to cover.  Let's start with my NAS situation as it's changed substantially since I've last posted.

My desire to use my wife's old PC as a NAS was completely abandoned.  There was an issue with trying to shut it down.  When I'd try to shut down the NAS from it's web GUI, it wouldn't shut down and just hang.  So instead of trying to figure that out, I swapped computers yet again.

I took apart my Windows XP computer, got a new case for my Windows 7 machine, and shuffled everything around yet again:

From left to right:
NAS, empty case, wife's old compy.

NAS Specs:
Rosewill R101-P-BK 120mm Fan MicroATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Rosewill RFA-120-BL 120mm 4 Blue LEDs LED Case Fan
CHAINTECH 7NIL1 462(A) NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 3000+ Barton 2.1GHz Socket A Processor
Rosewill RCX-Z100 One ball bearing for over 45000/hrs life CPU Cooler
1.2 GB PC3200 DDR 400 RAM
Transcend 2GB Compact Flash (CF) Flash Card Model TS2GCF133
SYBA SD-CF-IDE-BR IDE to Compact Flash Adapter (Bracket Version)
MSI RX9800PRO-TD128 Radeon 9800PRO 128MB 256-bit DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card
Rosewill RC-209-EX PCI 2.3, 32bit, 33/66Mhz SATA Controller Card
LG CD-R/RW Drive (CED-8120D)
HIPRO HP-P303W PSU

The empty case is a Foxconn 300 Watts MATX Mini Tower Case.  I bought it in 2004 for $30 and has been a pretty nice case.  It just lacks hard drive space, access to the far side of the case (or the side where my wife's computer is in the picture) and HD front audio.  This was the case my Windows 7 machine was in up until recently when I bought an NZXT Vulcan for that computer.

For my wife's old computer, the specs are on the first post of my blog, although it's changed too with the addition of the following:
DVD-116ME DVD ROM
Floppy Drive
Zonet Firewire/USB2.0 PCI Combo Card Model ZUC2400
Dynatron BH-610/C61G 60mm Ball Cooling Fan/Heatsink
And I've removed the hard drives from this computer.  (More on that later.)

Additionally, the heatsink currently in the NAS I had originally bought for my wife's computer when it was going to be the NAS (because her heatsink/fan was on it's last leg and was loud.)  But being I bought it new, I felt I would keep it over the 8 year old Dynatron, and moved it from the Athalon 1200 to the Barton XP and put the Dynatron on the Athalon 1200.

This NAS configuration ended up being quite a boon to the project.  Not only did the NAS become less problematic, but actually ran faster.  My wife's computer running as a NAS only ever topped out at 25 MB/s.  With the new hardware (and a SATA drive installed) I was able to get 37.5-60 MB/s.  In fact it was kinda fun to watch the system as I transferred files to the NAS.  The CPU temp would slowly climb, once it reached a threshold, the transfer would pause to allow the CPU to cool back down, and then it would start again.  Very nice.

As for the HD for the NAS, I'm still waiting for prices to reach pre-flooding prices (or about $70 for a 2TB drive).