Lemonade

SkynetV4

SkynetV4

Mildly Dipped
Sorry for the misleading topic but I thought I would create a topic like this for the technically-tortured. I work at Dell Tech support and I manage to fix roughly 70% to 80% of the systems that I get calls for on the first call. I wish I had the same kinda luck at home. Ever since I started going indie from brand systems and I started building my own rigs, I've never had one that doesn't make my drool bile. I just spent a bit over $1000 on a rig on Feb of last year and it's been a lemon. I got crashes, memory address errors and even DIMM module theft! It started with crashes on Warcraft 3 with their typical "an instruction at [address] has referenced memory at [address]. The memory could not be written/read". I thought it was RAM problems at first and someone decided to "help" me and stole one of the 512 MB DIMMs on the system leaving me with a whopping 512. The RAM wasn't too shabby (Corsair) so I went into a store to get replacements (I had to scam the clerks to sell to me at distributor prices using a receipt from a friend of mine who owns the store) and got an UltraTM 512 MB PC3200 chip that I was missing from a full gig. I install it and the remaining Corsair chip decides it doesn't like the newcomer and gives a lot of hell. I decided to go ahead and have a friend of mine test it and buy it if he finds it works for him and surprise, surprise...the memory renders the computers with no POST, so I can't recoup losses. Now I'm still getting memory errors and I'm starting to suspect its the memory slots on the system. Whats worse is that I don't know if upgrading this system would be worthwhile or maybe I should just ditch it or sell it in parts and buy another rig (that new Asus mobo for SLI looks sekseh, too bad I can't afford the price for the video cards). Anybody else feels like sharing their technical mishaps with your beloved systems?
 
Once I nearly fucked over the IDE bus in a Hewlett/Packard machine by putting in a Wang 40MB hard drive of questionable origin. The computer wouldn't boot for five minutes afterwards! Fortunately it decided to operate after that and while it was never quite right, it kept chugging for years afterward! I still have it and it still runs. Replaced it maybe 6 months ago with a snazzy Dell. I really took that HP for all it was worth, though, I stuck two more HDDs on it, an external CD-writer, a flash drive, a SCSI card, as much memory as the main board could handle, all sorts of stuff. Still isn't quite right, still works every time!
 
Bought two Maxtor 60gig drives a couple years back. They are all ready dead with only one smart-card warning. These drives are as bad as an IBM drive. So I hope two 120gig Hitachi drives and my promise raid array kicks my sys into high gear.
 
My current computer, which I got in mid-2003, was a bitch to get working. An experienced friend of mine built it for me, all the equipment (apart from the CD-ROM drive) was new and from established brands, and the damn thing made him look like an ass (especially to my mother who paid for half of the thing). First, after only several days of operation, the power source fried. Then, about a month later, the hard drive got fucked (no warnings) and we had to have it replaced (no data was recovered; fortunately I'd kept a drive from the previouscomputer where I'd stashed away the most valuable stuff). Shortly after that the CD-ROM drive, which was left from the previous rig, stopped working, so I finally bought a burner. That just kicked the bucket not long ago, and I haven't replaced it yet. And finally last December, the replacement hard drive nearly fucked itself too, almost magically, considering it had been operating flawlessly two hours before that.


It works now. But I know there's a monster lurking inside. I can see it in the evil glare of the LEDs... sooo evil....
 
I bought a system very similar to this three months ago.

It's uber-quiet with the liquid cooling system, has an extra gig of RAM due to a factory foul up, and runs the latest greatest games at highest resolution.

Hasn't given me any grief, struggle or strife yet. My previous system was built by a local computer geek company. The CDR never worked properly, it always crashed at the weirdest times, fried two video cards and the fan died.

All things considered it's worth the extra expense to have a professional comany build your system.
 
calculon00 said:
SkynetV4 said:
"an instruction at [address] has referenced memory at [address]. The memory could not be written/read".
Click to expand...
This is a Segmentation fault right?
Click to expand...

Well I guess you are right. Software unfortunately is not my forté but that sounds about right.
My GeForce FX 5700 Ultra wouldn't fit the case very well (it fit but getting the ports to portrude out of the back always took a bit of work of wiggling and squelching those delicate parts to make them fit. Since the vid card has VRAM on it, I figured that the tightness and physical stress cause it to give such errors, I got sick and performed a "mod" to the card involving a metal saw >:D and removed the part opposite from where you screw it down to the bracket that holds it in place so now it fits like a charm. I would have preferred to use my dad's dremel but I wasn't about to wake him up and ask him for it so I had to settle for a metal cutting saw and a metal file which I used to smoothen the sharpies left by Mr. Saw. And people say I don't know how to mod :p

One of my horror stories is my attempt at ice cooling the case just beyond the processor using ice on a bucket on the outside of the case to keep it cool. The freaking cold made freaking water condense inside the damn system and pooled some water on the motherboard. The system refused to POST so I had to dry it and left a bundle of silica gel packets inside for good measure. The system trudged along until 2004 when I replaced it with my current rig. That poor PC-SHITS motherboard was built to take the knocks though, my hats off to PC-SHITS for making such sturdy equipment.
 
my first computer i built in 1999 cost me 4 grand.

98 SE
kensington trackball
512 megs ram
ASUS ATX baby-server mothboard with onboard SCSI
21" NEC monitor
intel 450 cpu with 512k cache
vodoo 2 vid card
Seagate 18 gig SCSI LVD drive
Yamaha SCSI 4x4x16 burner
WD 10 gig IDE drive
IDE 16 cd drive

it ran great... for 3 months and then the WD drive went tits up and died so i replaced it with a 28 gig seagate IDE drive. then after a year the MOBO died and i had to spend another 550$ to replace it.

in 2001 i replaced most of it:

ASUS 133 FSB mobo
athalon thunderbird 1400 cpu
512 megs pc 2100 ram
adaptech low-end-server SCSI card
Seagate 18 gig, 10k rpm, 5ms seek SCSI LVD drive
geforce 2 mx 400 64 meg video card
win2k os

then in 2003 i upgraded the video card to geforce 4 ti 4200 which died in 2004 because of poor manufacturing. honestly... who the fuck puts plastic fan sitting on top of a gpu? i had to put back in my trusty geforce 2 mx 400 :( and i also got a microsoft optical trackball

since no computer shop anywhere where i have lived will even look at SCSI i had to build it all the time on my own. never had ANY problems other than cheapie crap.

there is no way in hell i would ever pay someone else to build my computers. most places look at my case and say WTF! its a server-class tower. 5 5 1/4 bays and 8 3 1/2 bays. it stands 3 ft tall :)
 
Well, I am off to get my new rig....

P4 3,2ghz
1 gig DDR 2
Mobo
XFX GF 6600GT
DVD RW+-
160 GB HD

and a Laptop

This is my biggest computerspend in 10 years, so I hope it won't act up.....
 
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