Jason-Saggers.com

Archive for the ‘Hardware’ Category

Well I have started having problems with my Creative X-Fi Audio card once again, there drivers seem so dirty, a lot of extra crap is installed along with the drivers, I mean what happened to the days when you would download a driver that was just the basic files that was required in order to use the hardware.

An example of this is a driver I downloaded for a USB based TV tuner, it was a 12mb file (give or take a few 100kb or so) I extracted it with 7-zip and went into the folder that contained the files and I pulled the files that I required, well that the operating system required and there where 4 files totaling 255kb in size, you should have seen all the other crap that was in there, 80% of it was not needed.

The only reason I use this card over the on board is because it has a lot more volume and depth than on board, on board has a serious lack of tonal volume so to speak.
The creative card has major problems in games, UT3 audio is all over the place and don’t even get me started with Bioshock, that game use to have perfect audio but now it is so bad that the game is un-playable…

I went to download a new driver or the latest driver for the card which is over 1 year old now as you can see in the image below.

Dated the 02/07/2009, what the hell.

The image below shows the extracted files and what seems to be a lack of support for windows 7.

4 main items and the Setup.ini file shows XP and Vista only, now I now that Vista drivers will work on Win7 but that is just slack guys.

Don’t even get me started on that crap and totally useless Creative ALchemy, the latest version wont even detect any games that I have installed, when there should be at least 20 games in the list, if I go to add one it just comes up with a error message saying the game has all ready been added but there is nothing in the list.

Creative it is about time to pull your fingers out of your arse because there is no way in hell that I am going back to on board audio and I simply don’t have the funds to buy an alternative from another manufacture, not that I would because most of them still seem to use some sort of creative chipset.

I have purchased a new NXZT Vulcan computer case which according to the specifications takes a 200mm side mounted case fan, so I purchased the Thermaltake 200mm blue led fan which should fit perfectly.

Well it didn’t, looks like the specifications should have stated a 220mm fan because that is actually what it takes.
So I had to come up with a small mod in order to fix the problem because I had no desire to send the unit back to PCCaseGear down in Melbourne.

As you can see it now fits, the fan come with the white spaces and the large bolts, I just used some scrap metal and some smaller bolts to mount it all.

The first video shows a few issues that I had with the case.

I will post pictures of how I fixed the 200mm fan mounting issue.

The second video is of the completed setup.

A few small issues that I had with the case where overcome, I am still a little worried about the top handle and the serious lack if support that it has.

Well I have spotted the perfect computer case, it is a large full ATX case so it is huge and would over power my small MATX gear.

I my words this case has it all and some.

Available in red, White and Blue, all version look amazing.

Well I went to the local computer markets the Saturday just gone and picked up a new SATA DVD burner for $25, Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit OEM for $110 and 4.0GB of Geil DDR3-1333 ram for $110 which was all with in my budget.

Now I haven’t decided if I really want the Thermaltake Lanbox Lite case or if I want to mod the hell out of my Thermaltake V3 tower case.

More update to come.

Well I am slowly putting together a new system, actually just getting a few new parts.

I ordered a new ASUS P5G41T-M-LX micro ATX baord yesterday and I received it this morning which was quick, now all I need is my new case and DDR3 memory, sell some current gear and use some of my tax return for these new parts, actually just selling the old current gear I should be able to get the new items.

I am also upgrading to windows 7 home premium x64, I can get an OEM copy for about $115

I am not a big fan of large computers and find them overkill for what they do, sure they can store multiple hard disk drives, I am not a big fan of having many hard disk drives, just means that it’s more files for me to manage and maintain, more items to power and more items producing more heat.

The case I am getting is the Thermaltake Lanbox Lite, I just love these little case, I use to own the Silverstone SG02 SFF case that I had terrible cooling issues with, I can see the new case working out a lot better.

As for DDR3 memory, I require 4GB of dual channel memory, around 1333 would be good, if I could get it for about $110 to $120would be good. GeiL and Mushkin have some nice kits that fit the budget.

I will keep you all postage.

This is more of a laptop issue than a desktop one, here are 2 small programs that will show the Caps Lock, Scroll Lock and Num Lock status in the system tray.

First up is Keyboard Leds

This program works fine with Vista and windows 7.
The program is simple and does what it is suppose to do.

Next up is TrayStatus which does the same thing but also goes one step further and shows the HDD activity.

2 very nice programs, I do like the added HDD activity of TrayStatus but keyboard leds is more customizable.

It is hard to decide so I give both applications two thumbs up

My young (newish) 4.0Gb SDHC card has corrupted it self, not a problem because I normally copy most of the images to my desktop or laptop.
But this time there was about 20 images I really wanted, so I searched the inter webs and found a program that worked fine until I went to restore them and the below happened.

I don’t remember seeing that on the website.
Back to Google and I found Zero Assumption Digital Image Recovery program which is free.

I managed to restore the images I wanted (some are used in this post)

I also put the card back into my camera and re formatted it fine and it works perfectly again, until next time, at least this time I have a program installed that is ready to go.