Wizard

V lags I. Meaning, volt is delayed by 90 deg by I which takes current to charge up that cap to see voltage rise. So voltage rises and falls by 90 degrees. BTW, capacitor DOES not pass current. It is used to isolate two circuits (used in signal transfer) and to buffer & smooth voltage that circuit requiries. Also there is other circuits that uses the C constant of a cap to generate sawtooth of some types. As well as paraola waveform ampified from very weak ripple off a capacitor of low frequency for example to shape the high freq component (ie pincushion). When you have to fix, much of circuits depends on ESR of electrolytics. Once ESR is too high, circuit operates irratically or stop working, or worse blown up. So get a bob parker's ESR meter for this. Cheers, Wizard

Since Seagate, WD, Maxtor, Samsung have not yet implemented the park ramp for 3.5" series that Hitachi is doing for long time. I had to wait for my local store to get back selling hitachi HDs that was YEARS, now yay, I am able to! Just ordered the 160GB hitachi. Cheers, Wizard

Added power requirements to spin the added platters is real. Able to do it within 8W with 4 platters is awesome piece of design (have the deskstar 8). I once took apart many Tandon/WD stepper drives (they're 1 or 2 platter types, 20-40MB, awful high failure rate.) and restacked solid with platters on one of those. Plugged in, it took forever to spin up and didn't spin up to speed as motor had insufficient power to maintain 3600rpm. Even spun up few without platters, and spindle motor took off like a rocket. WHIRR!! Cheers, Wizard

Replace the memory with brand version like OCZ, curcial etc. This is not good as overvolting exposes that memory is bit weak to begin with. Cheers, Wizard

I first saw this 17 years ago too. Changed IDE cable did the fix, myself. That was before the forum was around and the nearest thing was BBS & 2400 baud modem. Cheers, Wizard

This kind of height (ie Golden Gate) falling into water is sure death. I have heard about it from other discussions about same take. Cheers, Wizard

I'm considering making my own PVR but first I wanted to see your high quality photo shots of images on Freevo/MythTV recorded stuff from NTSC, 480, 500lines and 720 so on and lightly processed so not to distort the pics or pixelate it. I'm still on the fence because of poor quality screen shots that I could find online. If I can't tell if it was live or recorded then that's a big bonus. If I can see pixelations and distortations like I see all HDTV sets upconverted from NTSC/video/s-video. That will turn me off. Currently all HDTV ready sets (16:9) is 2H and 2.14H horizontal frequency (15.7KHz times (n)H) this means 31.4KHz and 33.6KHz horizontal frequencies this forces makers to use low quality upconverter chipset to upconvert non-HD video signals (NSTC, 720 etc). I'm very allergic to that quality loss, it is like watching on "Yourtube" videos TERRIBLE! In native HDTV resolution (1080) is AWESOME but AGAIN, the quality of NTSC is pretty GOOD in 500 lines like Dr. Who episodes in 1980's. Top of the line upconverter boxes is $1500 and up range. This is major reason I have NOT YET ditched all CRTs with NTSC tuners. And I wanted to know how good these Freevo & MythTV fare with digitalizing the analog signals in quality-wise. Thanks! Cheers, Wizard

You need 256MB 16 chip module if the motherboard is older than intel 815 chipset. Expect to pay permium for that. Cheers, Wizard

I had same "squeak" on spinup and spindown on old Maxtors like 200MB, 400MB, 1GB or so. I can feel it squeaking/short beep just touching hard drive top when doing that. Cheers, Wizard

More thinking and clues finally got google gave up info I wanted to see. Currently all TN-based panels are 6 bit. The 940BF is 6bit with RTC and dithered, also FRC. There are other TN models did without FRC. I'll keep looking. The local store only have 940BF, the VG922 not here. Either I wait for SED or hyperfast LCD panel around 0.5ms except my 4 years old samsung 793MB is finally getting dimmer. Cheers, Wizard

Edit: Samsung 940BF

I saw a demo of this 940BF and looked up specs for 940BF and really like it. Ok, is these panels still 6 bit design like the prior older fast ms response LCDs were? (8ms to 20ms range). Cheers, Wizard

Also one thing have to consider, conroe shines brightly on lower watts and improved processor performance. Wattage is one of my major reasons for sticking with AMD till then. Cheers, Wizard

Good points on these. Mostly common sense stuff. Tyan, I had trouble with two before (socket 7 days), may have to get non-Tyan dual-CPU board instead. 1. Is the CPU heatsinks mounted PROPERLY? 2. If chipsets have heatsinks or have fans on them, best to change them over to larger chipset heatsink with some artic paste. 3. What kind of case is it is and good air flow design practice? Cheers, Wizard

Viewsonic is not a brand maker, it is a rebrander of other monitor makers. I had 70F opened and was very GENERIC quality. I think the PC didn't sense the certain correctly grounded pin (basis for IBM standards) to tell the onboard chipset monitor is connected. Cheers, Wizard