"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
04/28/2020 at 02:53 • Filed to: None
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"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
04/28/2020 at 02:53 • Filed to: None | 0
| 1 |
If there’s a newer driver available I keep thinking that I should have it installed even if the computer is working just fine. This Acer Z3771 has been driving me a little crazy because it keeps crashing when I try to install various Intel system drivers; some that are installed are 2-3 years old (the newest available is from early 2018) whilst others are the basic Microsoft ones that date back to 2006. Everything works as it should as best I can tell, but I keep thinking that I’m missing something by not being current.
Windows is up-to-date, the processor (now an i5 2500S instead of the stock Pentium G630, with no need to spend twice as much as I spent on the whole computer for an i7 ), RAM upgrades (now maxed out at a whopping 8GB) and SSD install went just fine, although I’m still a little ticked that I can’t upgrade the BIOS to use Ivy Bridge chips (like the one I ordered...) There is a little more expansion on this system than I expected - one free PCIe mini slot (some systems came with TV tuners), an extra SATA port and a low-profile PCIe x16 slot for a video card; I tested that x16 slot with a video card and it installed and was recognized, but I’m sure that it is only active when an app needs the performance, like on a notebook computer with the same arrangement. But can anything I throw in there really make much of a difference? I have newer, better, faster computers, so it’s not like I’m going to be using this one for folding, gaming, or even watching TV (re: PCIe-mini slot). About the closest thing to gaming I might do with it would be to use it as the instrument panel display when doing flight simulation, provided I can get two computers connected to do this. I think the touchscreen might come in quite handy here.
I do have to admit that I really do like the touchscreen. Yeah, it’s going to get a little messy with fingerprints and I know some people don’t like that, but I’m a slob so that really doesn’t bother me (and it can easily be fixed if it does). I’ve been a big iPad user since 2010, so having to actually use a keyboard and mouse is sometimes a bother. I’ll probably keep this system just off to my left so that I can swing around and check email, Oppo, F@H status etc. with just a simple touch, keyboard tucked just underneath for easy access if I need it.
I was thinking of giving this to my mother, but I don’t know if I can part with it now. She has a decent AMD system, although I think this one is a little faster. She seems content with her computer but I found it to be a tad slow, at least for my tastes; I might just send a GPU and some RAM for dad to install (and maybe an SSD)...
TheRealBicycleBuck
> Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
04/28/2020 at 08:03 |
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I’m too cheap to spend cash on something I know is going to disappoint me in the end. I get a new work laptop every two years and my kids get newish computers every year through school (they replace them every three years or so and the upper class men get the newest models). I buy my wife a new computer every three or four years.
All that means that my old desktops are really, really old. While I was pretty good about moving files as we upgraded, we haven’t done a good job of organizing. Now I’m having to go back and make sure that everything really did get copied up to the two external drives that we are using as archives.
The biggest problem right now is trying to rescue all of our graduate school work. It was stored on Zip disks . That was an awkward time in computing. CDR hadn’t really caught on yet and was really expensive. External USB drives weren’t a thing yet. Floppies were too small to be really useful. So the Zip disk, looking like a big floppy disk but holding so much more data, seemed to be the perfect solution. All of the university computing labs added Zip drives to all of their systems.
Then came the click of death. When that happened, the faulty drive would kill any disk inserted into it. We all got scared and stopped using the drives, but any archived data was stuck in limbo.
Now I have rescued two Zip drives, both internal units, but I’m having a hard time getting a system set up to run the drive. My best hope, an ancient Dell, has the right IDE connector, but it can’t be enabled in the BIOS. I bought an external IDE to USB adapter (neat piece of equipment by the way), but it doesn’t have the right power cable to run the Zip drive. Now I’m waiting on yet another power adapter to arrive. Hopefully, this will end this little odyssey to save some digital bits of my past.