General Computer Thread

[Owain Taggart]

No, those two ports I mentioned are just for analog phones

Ok, reason I asked is that those ports can be easily mistaken for phone ports as they look very similar. Doesn't help that some CAT6 cables look almost identical to old analogue phone cables. I was at Walmart recently and had to do a double-take as their CAT6 they were selling was a thin white cable.

 

[Marc]

Ok, reason I asked is that those ports can be easily mistaken for phone ports as they look very similar. Doesn't help that some CAT6 cables look almost identical to old analogue phone cables. I was at Walmart recently and had to do a double-take as their CAT6 they were selling was a thin white cable.

slim cables and flat - bit of a religious argument there.

Some people argue they're useless, others swear by them

Can be useful going between a patch panel and a switch because you can get them in 6" (and I don't think I've ever seen the regular size patch cables that short) cos things don't get quite as messy when lots of ports are in use).

That said I'm not sure how they would over longer distances. I have one that goes from the computer room to the tivo mini in the bedroom so I've never really pushed it that hard.

Phones traditionally used RJ11 sockets and plugs which are the smaller ones but can use the larger RJ45 as all that matters is the correct pins are wired.

And it's the pins that matter - not the plug size. RJ45 gets used on console ports for networking equipment which 9pin serial plug at the other end. Seen RJ11 used on a connection between a receipt printer and a cash draw in POS environment

 

[Owain Taggart]

Phones traditionally used RJ11 sockets and plugs which are the smaller ones but can use the larger RJ45 as all that matters is the correct pins are wired.

Yeah, the ones I saw looked exactly like the old RJ11, which confused the heck out of me, as I then thought maybe they were pushing RJ11 as CAT6 cables. I went elsewhere to purchase a new cable. I once used a phone cable instead of a CAT5 cable, and when a tech came over to fix something, he was surprised I was getting anything via that.

 

[Tom Hendricks]

I’m about to build a PC for the first time in a very long time. Just picked these up today at Micro Center. It’s for Aaron, his present for his Bar Mitzvah.

 

[Santaman]

Have fun building!

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Have fun building but really wifi is wifi Gaming wifi is just a box with "gaming" on it and a price markup lol

Those are good parts though

 

[think]

having difficulty with paramount plus viewing the scifi shows ,,,, is this common you know optimizing for video playback?? I get breaks in the show then it just says video not avalible ,, I googled and it says to delete cookies I delete cookies and still problems what the heck is up I don't watch paramount regularly but this sucks what can I do to get stream going on yt doesn't mess like that ???

edit
must of been some kind of cookie problem i reloaded after it did it again and it was fine.. but it didn't happen right away,.. the halo show was great,..

 

[Tom Hendricks]

Have fun building but really wifi is wifi Gaming wifi is just a box with "gaming" on it and a price markup lol

Those are good parts though

I agree with you but this was a bundle through Micro Center and it was a really good deal. Also I don't think they mean "Gaming Wifi" its more the Gaming goes with the name of the board " and the Wifi is telling you the board has Wifi. I don't think anyone believes there is Gaming Wifi. However with the tricky marketing practices of companies, you never know. As you know anything with Gaming on the box is a guarantee for 10 more FPS when playing Triple A games and to run at least 3 percent cooler.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I agree with you but this was a bundle through Micro Center and it was a really good deal. Also I don't think they mean "Gaming Wifi" its more the Gaming goes with the name of the board " and the Wifi is telling you the board has Wifi. I don't think anyone believes there is Gaming Wifi. However with the tricky marketing practices of companies, you never know. As you know anything with Gaming on the box is a guarantee for 10 more FPS when playing Triple A games and to run at least 3 percent cooler.

That's the spirit..... I looked up those parts and they are good ones. Have fun with the build, post pics

Hey for those that do use windows I just got the popup that version 23H2 of Windows 11 is now ready for my machine. Should I make the change or leave things running as is till they force it?

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

For my birthday I got a Silverstone GD09 case. Moved all my bits into it. Fingers and toes crossed that it all works.

Motherboard standoffs are horrible

 

[Santaman]

Standoffs are not horrible, at least you can remove/add/move them around if your mainboard has a different mounting hole spacing, Micro ATX boards notoriously have the bottom front hole at a different spot than the equivalent located mounting point on an ATX board.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Standoffs are not horrible, at least you can remove/add/move them around if your mainboard has a different mounting hole spacing, Micro ATX boards notoriously have the bottom front hole at a different spot than the equivalent located mounting point on an ATX board.

They are when you can't separate them from the screw that goes into them. When moving my board into the new case they became horrible. Four of them were stuck fast.

The new case had them already installed so I had to remove four of them. My solution was to place the board and screw down the four existing ones and two new ones. The board is sitting snug in the case and everything is working.

Only mod I did was remove the metal mount for the optical and hdd caddy. Double sided tape fixed the ssd to the inside front panel.

 

[Santaman]

^^ Hold the standoff with a pair of plyers and just unscrew the screw, that will seperate them, also always check if the standoffs are bolted down tight before dropping a mainboard into the casing to prevent all that palaver..

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

^^ Hold the standoff with a pair of plyers and just unscrew the screw, that will seperate them, also always check if the standoffs are bolted down tight before dropping a mainboard into the casing to prevent all that palaver..

Tried that but just wouldn't work. Even tried a 4 Way tool for nuts that fits standoffs perfectly to hold it and use screwdriver on the screw but there was no joy.

 

[Santaman]

^^ Eat more spinach?

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

^^ Eat more spinach?

Hey it's all working so not pushing my luck.

 

[Tom Hendricks]

Here is the PC build in all its glory. The case is based on a character named Nazuko from the Anime Demon Slayer. Its Aaron’s favorite anime show.

Aaron with his machine

The internals

Aaron doing some gaming

Aaron chose a curved MSI gaming display. It’s 1440p and has a 165hz refresh rate.

 

[Santaman]

Nice machine.

Been messing with something much older today, I have three IBM PS/2 Model 30's and two of them have floppy drive issues, both the older drive types made by ALPS , the third one has two drives that are more built like the usual 720KB/1.44MB drives, of course with all the PS/2 weirdness like having wider cables and power to the drives delivered by the mainboard..
One of them has a ESDI harddrive which needs a low level format, it's also not sounding that great, these weren't known for their reliability and I don't have any spares and of course a ST-225 won't fit..

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Not a fan of LED lighting but nice machine all the same

 

[Marc]

One of them has a ESDI harddrive which needs a low level format,

time to dig out debug (or did the ESDI controllers for the PS/2 systems use a different method for for the low level format process?)