I recieved an email today from my hosting provider informing me that my disk usage limit was being approached.  Partly in response to this, and partly for other reasons, photos.mtwstudios.com will be suspending account and quota changes for the time being.   This means you wont be able to request more space with which to host your photos.   I’m also not honoring any new user registrations.

More details about other services will be posted here with a better explanation when I get the chance.

Hopefully I’ll be able to lift the restrictions soon.   As a side thought, placing small advertisements would help take care of the cost.  Would placing ads on the site be an acceptable way to keep it free and expandable?  Comment.

Well I finally got around to building my college computer (the day before I move in). The parts I bought all from newegg.com, and it’s a slightly different configuration from what I previously posted. The entire build took about 1 hour, from start to finish.

PARTS:

• DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard – Retail
  
• Rosewill TU-155 Black 0.8mm SGCC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 400W(20+4 pin) Power Supply – Retail
• SAMSUNG 16X DVD�R DVD Burner With 5X DVD-RAM Write and LightScribe Black ATA/ATAPI Model SH-S162L – OEM
  
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive – OEM
• Kingston ValueRAM 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model KVR400X64C3AK2/1G – Retail
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Manchester 2000MHz HT Socket 939 Dual Core Processor Model ADA3800BVBOX – Retail
• eVGA 256-P2-N554-AX Geforce 7600GT KO 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card – Retail

[I was going to write a story about how I put it together and everything and it was going to go here. However I lost interest and you would probably do the same reading it. Therefore you can just look at the pictures here]

Finally done with the hardware, I went on to trying to set up the software on the machine. I decided on the name TULIP for reasons only some of you are meant to get – dont think too hard about it if you dont.

My first attempt at installing Windows XP proved unsuccessful (the installation phase after 1st restart happened twice for some reason, and then after auto-login, explorer failed to load). I realized the media was faulty, and proceeded to burn another copy of the disc. After trying installing with the new media, I ran into problems after booting which I eventually pinned down to the memory having issues. After doing a little research I realized that the LanParty motherboard was not liking the ValueRAM I had fed it. I was forced to make it run single-channel at 333MHz, which I was NOT happy about.

Even though it installed with the RAM at 400MHz, it was a corrupt installation, so running at 333MHz still resulted in system instability. The answer was to start from scratch (this was at about 10PM), re-installing Windows with the RAM at 333MHz. This went flawlessly, and within minutes I was running on a stable system and installation.

It’s working very well – quite snappy and all. Running BOINC on it shows it performs considerably better than the VPRM2660, but that’s not saying much. Because of that memory problem, an upgrade for the memory (probably to 2 or 3 GB, but this time with the right speed) is in order. A new power supply would be the next thing on the list….

With college fast-approaching, many of us are looks at major purchases for our rooms… Do I really need the ducky dental floss to compliment the duck wastebasket? Or maybe the duck toothbrush is enough…

Myself, I’m alittle more interested in the computer I’m buying.

After doing some looking at different options, I’ve compiled what I think is the best value system that will get me the best performance and be able to last me for all my college needs. Keep in mind this is subject to change, and I’m looking for additions, comments, suggestions, etc.

Part	Picture	Name/Description	Price
CPU		AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Manchester 2000MHz HT Socket 939	$150.00
Motherboard		eVGA 133-K8-NF41 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce SLI ATX	$78.99
Video Card		eVGA 256-P2-N554-AX GeForce 7600GT KO 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16	$165.99
RAM		Kingston ValueRAM 1GB (2x512MB) 184-Pin DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel	$99.99
Hard Drive		Open Box Segate Barracuda 7200PRM ST325082 250GB SATA 3.0Gb/s	$71.57
Optical Drive		NEC 16x DVD+-R DVD Burner IDE	$29.50
Case/PSU		Rosewill TU-155 Steel ATX Mid Tower w/ 400W PSU	$49.99
Monitor		NEC Accusync 70	$0 Donated by Mr. Marino
Total:			$646.03

Keep in mind I’ll be adding 3x160GB IDE HDs to this configuration for a total 730GB. Also, I might be overclocking the CPU since reading an article showing that the 3800+ is easily overclock-able into the 4800+ range! I also want to expand the memory to 2GB, but not in the near future.

It interests me what other people are doing/did in terms of what computer they chose and how much they spent on it… just for comparison’s sake.

Our home network’s grown over the past week or so, adding on the new hosts from Mr. Marino. This together with having to stare at the mess of the cable modem and the router next to my main workstation compelled me to re-organize the mess that was our home network wiring.

The problem was that the hardware was not in a central location, making it hard to do patching or re-routing. This was due to bad planning – the basement network segment was added after the main location in the library, almost as an afterthought. A single 100Mbps link between the two segments was just begging for bottlenecking.

The solution, then was to relocate the cable modem and wireless router into the basement, so that the center of the house is where the main network segment is based. The single link up to the Library is still there, but now that just provides for fairer distribution of resources.

The question was how to arrange all of the equipment in a semi-secure manner, which would still be easy to maintain. I had known about the possibility of mounting everything to a block of wood, but I wasn’t too thrilled with that idea because I don’t know the first thing about working with wood. Searching the web for an answer, I found an ingenius idea on Slashdot, which included strapping the hardware to the sides of a plastic cube. Since I knew we had many such cubes around the house, I decided to try that option.

After finding a suitable cube, and waiting ’till everyone in the house was (supposed to be asleep), I got to work. First step was to disconnect everything in the library to take it down stairs. Then I needed to re-route the cable line to go to the center of the basement instead of up to the library. The next step was attaching all of the hardware to the sides of the cube. This was probably the most fun of the entire process. I attached the the Gigabit switch, VoIP TA, Cable Modem, Wireless Router, and power strip to power it all, all to the inside of the cube. Then I attached the power cables/supplies for each of them and made them as neat as possible with the help off some more cable ties. Last step was to patch everything together, bring the network back up, and make sure everything worked correctly.

In total, the network downtime was a little over an hour. The reorganization into the central location should make future adminitration of the network much easier. It might not look that much cleaner, but now the network infrastructure makes alittle more sense.
Now all I need to do is to replace compaq266 (probably marino800)…