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ericsbane06 - IT'S ALIVE!


V.T. Eric Layton

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V.T. Eric Layton

OK, I recently inherited some discarded miscellaneous computer "body parts" and also found some other digging around in computer graveyards late at night. Meet my newest Frankenputer, ericsbane06. It's not really the system I wanted, but hey... it'll do in a pinch.

 

ericsbane06

  • Coolermaster Elite 430 case
  • XFX MDA72P7509 AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA nForce 750a SLI ATX mobo
  • AMD Phenom II X4 9500 CPU
  • Ultra U12-40656 Carbon X7 CPU Cooler
  • Nvidia Matched 1Gig X4 PC6400 RAM
  • ArcticPower True 650W PSU
  • 150 Gig WD Raptor 10,000 RPM
  • 150 Gig WD Raptor 10,000 RPM
  • 320 Gig WD Caviar 7200 RPM
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX550 Ti
  • Generic SATA DVD/RW

There you have it. The drives are already partitioned and formatted. I'm installing Slackware on the 1st Raptor and mirroring it (via rsync) on identical partitions on the second Raptor. I'll be installing Win 7 on the 320 Gig drive along with a 200 Gig common storage partition for Win/Lin.

 

This system is a wee bit less CPU capable, but a tad bit better with graphics capabilities than my recently crashed ericsbane05. There is also a give/take situation with the hdds. The Raptors have impressive search/find speeds, twice as fast as the 7200 RPM drive. However, they are only SATA I capable (150mb/sec transfer); whereas the 320 Gig drive is SATA II (300mb/sec).

 

It won't be finished for a few more days, but I'll be working on it... installing OSes, primarily. Once everything is installed and debugged, the time consuming job of customizing my Slackware and Win 7 can begin. I much prefer the hardware work these days. I loathe OS installations, particularly Win installations. :( Oh well... it has to be done. Right? :yes:

 

Oh, and some pics...

 

ericsbane06-3_zps90a7fe44.jpg

 

ericsbane06-1_zps8ee2a461.jpg

 

ericsbane06-2_zps4d1e8419.jpg

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Guest LilBambi

May not be what you wanted, but you know what the song says,

 

You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.

~. The Rolling Stones

 

At least for the moment.

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V.T. Eric Layton

I guess I should birch about the gift horse and all that. There are starving children in China who don't have any computers. Oh, wait... that's something totally different. I'll ship them my broccoli. ;)

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V.T. Eric Layton

Sad to say, but I don't find installing operating systems quite the challenging and fun experience that it used to be. Nowadays, it's just, well.. work. It's boring, annoying, aggravating, tiring, etc. Just like work. :(

 

I have Slack installed, but my backed up configs for KDE are corrupted/not working, so I have to customize KDE from scratch. I'll save that for another day. In the meantime, I'm running Xfce, but it has some issues also.

 

I still have to install all my SlackBuild apps and such. It makes for a long day. I'm not at all looking forward to doing all this in Win 7. Although, the good thing about Windows these days is that I use it nearly stock-from-the-box. About all I do is add three or four 3rd party security apps and a couple Windows themes. That's about it.

 

Anywho, taking a break for a while. My eyes hurt. I'm gonna' go close them for a bit.

 

Later...

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V.T. Eric Layton

Made a lot of progress this evening/morning. Still a few more things to do and some bugs to squash.

 

G'night...

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V.T. Eric Layton

This 24" monitor is HUGE after using that little laptop for the past month. ;)

 

Almost all done setting up. I have a bug or two to work on and then I should be ready to sync my entire installation onto my backup drive.

 

In a couple days, I'll install my Win 7.

 

It's 0400. I'm tired.

 

G'night...

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Well done! Nothing like a custom build and you have some pretty solid parts in there. Maybe you can find some more DDR2 RAM and you'll be set.

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Yeah not so much for Linux but Windows 7 will be happier with more RAM.

Just checked and my 64 bit Windows 7 Pro is sucking up 3 GB of RAM, not doing all that much.

Edited by raymac46
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Yeah not so much for Linux but Windows 7 will be happier with more RAM.

Just checked and my 64 bit Windows 7 Pro is sucking up 3 GB of RAM, not doing all that much.

Yes, I find that Windows 7 really doesn't run acceptably on less than 4 GB RAM.

I have upgraded a bunch of folks computers from XP with 2 GB of Ram to 7 with 4GB of Ram and been pretty happy with the results.

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Guest LilBambi

4GB is minimum for Windows 7 to run comfortably for sure.

 

I have seen it run on 2GB and it wasn't pretty with Antivirus, etc.

 

I personally (for me) would prefer minimum 6GB expandable to 8, 12 or 16GB for when the OS and programs get heavier as they are wont to do over time, and we still have till 2020 before Windows 7 expires so it would be nice to be able to expand it as needed as time goes on.

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V.T. Eric Layton

Well done! Nothing like a custom build and you have some pretty solid parts in there. Maybe you can find some more DDR2 RAM and you'll be set.

 

Sadly, I tossed two probably perfectly good sticks of 2Gig DDR2 out the other day. They came out of the crashed system. For some reason or another (can't remember now), I thought them defective.

 

bang-head-on-wall.gif

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V.T. Eric Layton

4GB is minimum for Windows 7 to run comfortably for sure.

 

I have seen it run on 2GB and it wasn't pretty with Antivirus, etc.

 

 

 

In Slack (Xfce), I struggle just to utilize 2Gig on this system. I'm doing about 8-10 different things right now... syncing, copying files from flash to hdd, maintaining two ssh connections, running FF and TB, have an OpenOffice doc open, three consoles going, etc. I'm utilizing 26% of my 4Gig RAM. :)

 

I'm running Win 7 Enterprise on my Dell Inspiron 1521 with only 2Gig of RAM. I'm using MS Sec Essentials. It runs like a champ, no resource issues at all.

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Win 7 will probably take what it gets from you. I'm on a 4 GB laptop right now and it's using 1.7 GB of RAM.

Eric maybe I misunderstood. Do you have 4 GB in your system now? If so you are OK.

Edited by raymac46
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V.T. Eric Layton

Win 7 will probably take what it gets from you. I'm on a 4 GB laptop right now and it's using 1.7 GB of RAM.

Eric maybe I misunderstood. Do you have 4 GB in your system now? If so you are OK.

 

I've been running Win 7 in my Dell Inspiron 1521 for a couple years already. That system only has 2G RAM, yet I've never had any resource issues using Win 7 on that machine. It was actually my very first Win 7 installation and experience. I was impressed from the get-go.

 

ericsbane06, the recently assembled Frankenputer that is the replacement for my recently crashed ericsbane05 is going to get Win 7 installed in just a little while. It has 4G RAM. Should be no problem. :)

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V.T. Eric Layton

OK, after many hours of head bangin' to the sounds of Black Label Society, I've finally completed the install and customization of my primary operating system (Slackware) on my new (to me, anyway) Frankenputer, ericsbane06. I've synced my Slack partitions to my backup drive. All is well in my world again.

 

In a little while (once Hogan's Heroes is over ;) ), I'm going to install Win 7 on this machine also. I hope it goes as easily as it did on my laptop a couple years ago. :yes:

 

There you have it. :)

 

Later this weekend, I'll be installing my favorite STALKER and Deus Ex games. Let the mutant and zombie killing begin! 1054.gif icon_e_wink_zpsb08ce828.gif smiley_emoticons_zombie02_zpsd5576784.gif

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V.T. Eric Layton

Alrighty...

 

MS Win 7 is in and all set up. YAY! Relatively easy-peasy. :w00t:

 

I'm ready to game! In Slack, I'm getting 16000fps without compositing and 8000 with it. Not as good as my GTS-450 card, surprisingly, but it'll do. :) It's odd because the GTX-550 is supposed to be a better performing vid card. It'll play STALKER just fine, anyway. :yes:

 

It's kinda' funny, but with 7 fans and these two 10K RPM Raptors in this box, it sounds like that big Chance-Voight radial in an F4U Corsair spooling up on the tarmac.

I don't mind, though. That processor hasn't gotten hotter then 113F and the drives are all running at 95F. Can't beat that. Besides, with the fans and AC running for 8 out of 12 months here in FL, I won't hear it at all. ;)

 

DTB_6025.jpg

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The next few days that should be a good thing.

Don't need to run the heat in the house, just sit at the desk and let the computer keep you warm.

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V.T. Eric Layton

But wait... there's more. Would you believe I forgot to activate my Win 7? I'm so used to entering that key when I install XP. I must boot Win 7 and activate later this evening. We must allow ET to phone home to the mother ship, you know. ;)

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  • 2 weeks later...
V.T. Eric Layton

Hmm... I sure hope this is no omen of how 2014 will be going for me.

 

ericsbane06, my latest Frankenputer, dropped video tonight for some reason or another. I was in Slack. Everything was fine. I rebooted to go into Win 7 and no video. The system boots, though. I can access it via ssh from my laptop. A quick lspci | grep VGA shows that my vid card is there. Slackware sees it, but there's no output to the monitor.

 

Oddly enough, there's no output from the onboard video either. This may be a jumper setting, though. This is an old board, remember? I'll have to check it out tomorrow when I'm not so pissed. :(

 

Well, I'm back on the lappy again. Old faithful. :)

 

Later...

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V.T. Eric Layton

It's all better this morning. The Computer Repair Fairies must have come by in the night. Seriously, it's working fine. I think the monitor had a brain fart and powering down overnight solved the issue. That's my best guess. Regardless of the reason, I'm not complaining about the outcome. I wasn't looking forward to having to tear down this system to troubleshoot it.

 

Computer%2Bfairy.JPG

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