Computers

[ballzac]

Just curious who here likes tinkering with computers and what your setup is.

At the moment, I have my E8400 running Ubuntu and Windows 7. I mostly use Ubuntu, but have a couple of programs that I hang on to Windows for. My girlfriend has a computer with very similar specs, running Windows 7. On the same network, we have an Athlon XP2000 with 256MB of RAM running freenas on a 4GB flash drive. Most of our storage is in the freenas, and we use Transmission on the freenas for torrents, so he's the only computer that needs to stay on. We've also got an HTPC in the loungeroom (i3-540) with a Gigabyte GT220 (chosen largely for its VDPAU capability) running XBMC. We are upgrading the freenas soon as the motherboard doesn't have many sata ports and they only run at SATA I speed. Also going to change to an HDD installation, as the flash drive setup is pretty unstable.

At the moment we have enough parts for another (Athlon XP) computer, but my girlfriend says we have enough computers. I'd love to have one in the bathroom so I can use google while I'm taking a shit, or use it as an HTPC for the bedroom. I'll probably be upgrading my computer at the end of the year. I'll probably keep the video card (8800GT) because I don't play games much, but I want to upgrade the cpu, and consequently the motherboard and RAM. A program that I needed to use for a uni project took nine hours to run, so a little extra speed would be good.

It's a shame that hi-end computer stuff puts a dint in the pocket, but it's actually quite fun setting up a lot of stuff with parts that are 10 years old and actually making good use of it.

So, anyone else into this kind of stuff? I'd love to hear what other peoples' networks look like and what old computers/parts they're putting to use.

Edited July 10, 2012 by ballzac
fixed a typo

[CβL]

I used to use an IBM server for a bit of graphics work. I had chucked XP onto it even though XP was specifically supported (yes it was very buggy). I actually really liked that computer (had RAID cards, a 10k SCSI HDD [which I ended up flicking off for about 70% what I paid for the whole unit]), and I still have it. But I don't use it anymore, because it sounded like a ramjet.

Currently I use quite a powerful PC I built back 2 years ago. I still run XP on it (although I'll get a linux dualboot once I can be bothered). I have a thing for fast hard drives (couldn't not, after having that sweet SCSI one) so I have a Velociraptor. The other components are high spec, but yeah, I'm a little disappointed I spent so much money and don't really use the features. It's essentially a gaming PC. But I don't play games. :/

Oh well. It was just an expensive lesson hahaha.

[mac]

most of my machines are old or build ups from spare parts i bring home from work, or pick up cheap when people upgrade their old machines

My main runners are a couple of old socket 775 pentuim D rigs one a 3ghz cpu, 7800gt 2gb DDR2

The other is a 3.4ghz cpu, XFX GT220 with 3gb DDR2 running in raid 0 on a couple of old 120gb barracuda ide drives & vista 64bit OS

have a old socket 486 P4 3ghz(first of the hyperthreading cpu's) with 3gb ddr400 still cranking, its running a AGP HD 3750 the old girl will run COD modern warfare & its still playable

I do a little contract type work for a local shop (mainly just building them & the hardware side of things), also the usual virus removal, & general windows & software troubleshooting so have plenty of other old rigs laying around

another AMD 3500+ 64 bit & plenty of other boards cpus & memory laying about the house too many to mention

ballzac have you ever tried to get a few systems up in a cluster & use the processing power as one budget supercomputer would help with rendering time etc without spending the big bucks & utilizing what you have laying about

just need a good server & you dont need a cdrom drive/harddisk/floppy etc for the clients

i had a go with running clusterknoppix from a virtual machine in windows but had problems booting the others from lan, i may have to try again sometime

as i said im ok with hardware but not the best with GNU/Linux i just fix shit

Edited April 26, 2011 by mac

[synchromesh]

Phenom II X4 840

GA-870A-UD3

Radeon HD 6850

4GB DDR3

Ubuntu 10.10

[ballzac]

ballzac have you ever tried to get a few systems up in a cluster & use the processing power as one budget supercomputer would help with rendering time etc without spending the big bucks & utilizing what you have laying about

 

It's crossed my mind, but with only one, soon-to-be two, Athlon XPs lying around, I don't think it would be much of a "supercomputer", lol. I'm glad you mentioned it though, as it might be something to keep in mind for the future.

Both you guys mentioned RAID. I've been a bit apprehensive about using RAID, though it's a possibility for the new freenas system as freenas has software support for RAID. One issue is just the number of threads on forums about people not being able to reconfigure the array after their operating system crashed or something to that effect. Kind of defeats the purpose if you lose everything. I can't remember which RAID number's which, but some of them also improve performance by striping the data across several HDDs, might be worth it for some things, but then fault tolerance is actually worse than not using RAID at all. Some sort of nested configuration might be good for both performance and fault tolerance, but then you're using up so many HDDs for a given amount of storage, and there's still the problem of losing everything if you're operating system crashes and you can't reconfigure the array. I think a hardware solution would be better than software to ensure you get it back up and running in the event of a crash.

I think the parity of fault tolerance in some of the RAID arrays is pure genius. For anyone who doesn't know how they work, here's a simple explanation:

Consider the simple case of 4 HDDs that each store a single bit. Parity fault tolerance will have the storage capacity of 3 HDDs, the fourth one will have the sum of the data on the other three drives modulo 2. In other words, it basically counts the number of ones, and if there's an even number the final drive will have a zero, if there's an odd number it will have a 1. You might have the following data for the first three drives:

010

The fourth drive will have a 1 because the sum of the other drives is an odd number, so you have

0101

If, say, the second drive fails, you have

0#01

You replace the second drive and the RAID software/hardware looks at the fourth drive and says, "there must be an odd number of ones in the other three drives, therefore it puts a 1 on the second drive, and you get

0101

again. This works if any one of the four drives fails. Pretty ingenius I reckon. If I had've never heard of raid, I would have assumed you needed 2n drives to protect the data on n drives, but all you need is n+1 drives. Of course, the bigger n is, the more likely you are to have a second drive fail before you get around to replacing the first failed one, and if two drives fail, you lose all data.

Bluntmuffin,

My pc was, when I put it together, a gaming pc, although it can no longer play the latest games on high settings. When I got the 8800GT it was one of the best upper midrange cards you could get, and played any of the (then) latest games, like crysis, COD4, on high settings. I got a G25 steering wheel, which was exxy, but very, very good. I don't play a lot of games, but well and truly got my moneys worth out of the graphics card and the steering wheel. Main issue with the G25 is that I can't be bothered putting it on my desk and taking it off all the time, so when I'm on holidays I put it on for a week or so and just play GTR2 and Richard Burns all week and do not much else. Then I put it away for the rest of the year. I'm no good at those driving simulators, but they're so realistic that it doesn't really matter. It's just enjoyable to drive around even though I've never placed anywhere but last in an actual race, lol. The G25 will last a lifetime I reckon, and USB is probably going to be around forever too, so I should continue to reap the benefits.

[Blood Trance Fusion]

Phenom II X4 840

GA-870A-UD3

Radeon HD 6850

4GB DDR3

Ubuntu 10.10

 

Those parts betray you as a computer user of discerning value, good taste and open ethics! That's pretty much my computer except I'm running the latest build of Natty.

Edited April 27, 2011 by Blood Trance Fusion

[Fenris]

Core i7 920 running at stock, previously overclocked to 3.8 but was getting artifacts from unstable graphics drivers and couldn't be bothered with the overclock once I upgraded.

Asus P6T

Radeon 6970

6G DDR3

120 Gig Vertex 2 SSD + a couple of WD Black 500Gig

Windows 7, I was running the W7 Beta for about 6 months before I bought my copy.

22" Screen @1650x1050. The 6970 is way overkill for the size of monitor.

I like to Game

A friend of mine runs liquid cooling and a 3 way SLI & triple monitor setup, it looks awesome but slight overkill

[mac]

I like to Game

I dont mind a game or two myself when i get some free time & am not browsing the forum

The main ones i play would be black ops, modern warfare 2, old BF2 & special forces, just picked up bad company for myself & my son on the weekend

i have a fair few others i have not reinstalled yet so any PC gamers who use steam pm me ill give you my steam id

Edited April 27, 2011 by mac

[synchromesh]

Blood Trance Fusion - Thanks man! What's 11.04 like?

Fenris - Nice.

mac - Before the week is out, I should have Bad Company also.

Anybody pre-ordered Duke Nukem Forever yet? Silly question??

 

 

Edited April 27, 2011 by synchromesh

[ThunderIdeal]

codblops is cool, i'd play it if i could get decent speeds where i live.

[ballzac]

A friend of mine runs liquid cooling and a 3 way SLI & triple monitor setup, it looks awesome but slight overkill

 

The more monitors the better I reckon. I used to have a 40 something inch tv as my second monitor. Not great resolution, but it was good enough to have, a wiki page about such and such open while I work on an assignment on the main monitor. At the moment I only have the one, but will definitely get more in the future. It's a 26" samsung that can be rotated 90 degrees. I'll probably put that vertically for putting pdf or webpages on, and have two horizontal monitor of maybe 24 inch in front of me. A fourth one would be good for movies while I'm at the comp. Monitors are cheap these days (the 2693HM cost me $850 when I got it, and now something of the same size and resolution but with better contrast and latency can be had for about $400) but you'd need pretty good video cards to run 4 monitors with compiz desktop cube running.

[synchromesh]

I recently upgraded from an old 15" monitor to a new 21.5" monitor. Needless to say, it's quite different...

By the way, thanks again for your advice, ballzac. Thanks to mac and you, three of the most expensive things I bought were the graphics card, the motherboard and the CPU.

[Blood Trance Fusion]

Blood Trance Fusion - Thanks man! What's 11.04 like?

 

It's brilliant!!! Get it tomorrow!

[synchromesh]

Christ, it must be good!

[ballzac]

Just wanted to show off my current set up and praise a freeware program I found to make it all come together: Synergy

I mostly work from home, so I have one computer that's mostly for running code, with an overclocked 2500k in it, and my regular computer with an e8400 in it. I keep the 2500k purely for work, that way when I'm at uni and log into it remotely, nothing non-work related will be on the screen. Up until now, I have used windows remote to log into it from home, the same as I do from uni (well, I use ubuntu on my laptop at uni, but the method of logging in is equivalent).

There are problems with logging in remotely. Firstly, it is a little jittery, because ALL of the information is travelling across the network, and this can be a little slow. Secondly, this uses up space on my main computer monitors, so I have to constantly switch back and forth from my personal computer to my work computer if I'm doing stuff on both.

Synergy solves all these problems (when I'm at home, at least). It allows me to plug monitors directly into my work PC and I can use the keyboard and mouse from my personal PC. The mouse travels seamlessly from one computer to the other and you wouldn't even know they're different computers. You can even copy text from one computer and paste it in a document or browser on the other computer. Again, you wouldn't even know they are different computers. You can't drag windows from one computer to the other, but I prefer it like this anyway, in the interest of keeping my work one solely for work. At the moment I have two monitors plugged into my personal computer and two plugged into the work one. This gives me so much real estate. I can, for example, work on code on my portrait monitor, run code on the small monitor (both on the work computer), while I have my latex editor and pdflatex preview open for editing my thesis on my bottom 24" and looking up a scientific journal database on my top 24".

[space cadet swami]

is that an empty tin..? I cry for u brother.

[qualia]

just curious, what's the topic of your thesis?

[ballzac]

Awaiting more tobacco in the mail today. The tin's there to break open a ciggie into. I get looks of disgust when I tell people I bot winnie blues off my girlfriend and chew them when I've run out of tobacco, but I think it's far less disgusting than actually smoking them.

[ballzac]

just curious, what's the topic of your thesis?

 

Broadly, it's electron optics, mostly with regards to visualising vector potentials of magnetic nanomaterials.

[IndianDreaming]

What language do you code in ballz?

[ballzac]

Mostly c++. I used to be more familiar with matlab and used that for most of my work, but I'm becoming quite familiar with c++ syntax and it's much easier to create reliable standalone applications with, and also seems to be more efficient. I've rewritten most of my code in c++ now, but I still use matlab for visualisation as that what it does best. I tried installing the dislin library for c++, but wasn't successful in getting it to work and don't have the time to mess around with it at the moment, though it would be good to be able to put matlab to rest and use c++ exclusively.

[IndianDreaming]

Sweet - yeah c++ is great. What are you currently writing? Have you seen c# on Windoze?

[ballzac]

The stuff I'm working on is simulations of electron microscopy experiments. I'm building on work that was done by others, which made it easier to start learning c++ because I could just start with small modifications of the code until I started understanding it. It's also the main reason I switched from matlab, because I need to perform tasks that the code was not initially written for, and I originally altered the c++ code to write some data to files, then I would import them into matlab to run my own code on, then I would export them again and import back into c++ for further processing. It was very time-consuming, and as soon as I started getting a better feel for c++, I started writing everything in it.

I don't know anything about c#. c++ is probably the most common programming language at the moment, so I'm happy if I become very capable with it.

[IndianDreaming]

Sounds really interesting! I read a paper recently that would be right up your alley: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.5280.pdf and here's the popular blurb of it: http://www3.griffith.edu.au/03/ertiki/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=37742

Yes c++ is very popular - it's been slightly overtaken by objective c (thats what the iphone uses) - but c itself is actually still top of the list! probably because of embedded electronics where the object-oriented features of c++ are not required.

Learning c++ is very rewarding - I love it. You know you are actually entitled to call yourself multilingual if you understand the c languages, because they follow the same semantics, syntactics and grammatics of spoken languaes! Funny really - people say to me - can you speak any other languages, and I say 'yeah - c' - doesn't get a smile very often though

Hope all goes well with your thesis - shoot me a pm if you get stuck on any coding issues.

[qualia]

i hate c++. it's so grotesque and ugly.