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JMcGuire

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Everything posted by JMcGuire

  1. In fact, gold master CDs ARE gold. Burnable (and rewritable) CD's are coated with a very fine layer of gold. Manufactured silver CDs are stamped aluminum. They take the gold master and make a glass master, which is used to stamp the aluminum discs. CDs are marked with 1's and 0's on their surface along with tracking information. Writable gold CDs use the burner's laser to smudge the surface. Stamped aluminum CDs actually have physical indentations on the surface. So when they say a title has "gone to gold master" they mean it literally.
  2. 95/98/Me doesn't make good use of more than 32MB. Seriously. Ok, WinMe does sort-of-OK with up to 64MB, but you really have to move to Win2K or XP to really take advantage of 64MB+.
  3. Not true. DirectX files are totally independent of your chipset or video drivers.
  4. BTS or BFC or KFC or whomever they are this week walk a VERY fine line between eye candy and hard sim. I imagine if the water moved, grogs of all descriptions would rant and rave that it was both gamey and unnecessary, and at any rate really bogged down their P90's with on-board EGA.
  5. Why do you want to know? If the answer is simple curiosity, I can agree.
  6. That's actually the release following CMBB, CM:TRON.
  7. OEM perhaps, but not MS. Windows XP had very up-to-date drivers when it shipped. Technically the hardware manufacturers should be submitting driver updates to MS for distribution through Windows Update. Then the great majority of users would be on (or be notified about) the latest drivers all the time...
  8. My CMBO CD doesn't have the autorun.inf file which normally kicks off auto-run behavior. However, I do know certain older pieces of hardware (especially old Creative Labs stuff, some sound cards and their CD burners) used to come with "utility" software which had "enhanced" auto-run support -- if the inserted CD lacked an explicit autorun.inf, it would "helpfully" search the disc for a setup.exe or something similar. I'm betting you have one of these helper apps installed. Have a look in your system tray (down by the clock and volume icon), click or right-click the various icons and see if one of them has suspicious looking features on it's menu. Sorry I can't be more specific, it's been many years since I last saw the software I'm thinking of.
  9. LOL... Boy that shop of yours... Probably what they're referring to is the change that made XP run drivers in the kernel layer instead of a separate ring. Guess what? Win98 does this too, since it was VERY closely based on Win95 code. NT and Win2K don't do this, and that was the change -- XP is based on Win2K code, but for speed reasons they let drivers run at the same privledge layer as the kernel. That means a bad driver could blue-screen you -- but it's not remotely as bad as what a bad driver could do to Win98. Furthermore, if anything a driver problem is LESS likely to trash WinXP. First, the code is MUCH newer than Win98 and includes the switch-to-safemode, which is based on the same code in Win2K -- which basically puts you back on the default drivers (Standard VGA, for example). Second, XP has the new rollback points, which means you can set a rollback point, install a driver, and if it fails roll your entire system back to the previous configuration. They're probably just trying to unload their OEM copies of Win98, which are no longer available.
  10. Actually DirectX (Direct3D) can run in a window, but the app must be written to work that way from the outset, and CM is not. In the DirectX SDK documentation, refer to the D3DDISPLAYMODE and D3DPRESENT_PARAMETERS structs, for example. It would make a cool feature, though, and I believe the code changes should probably be restricted to the initialization code.
  11. Yes, it's called the CMOS battery. It's a little round battery like wrist watches use. (And I hate to say it again, but if your shop missed THAT one...) Page 15 of your manual shows the location of the battery, which you should be able to buy at Radio Shack for about $2. Your battery is directly behind the PCI slots, just above the floppy connector. If they didn't give you the manual, you can download it here in PDF format: ftp://ftp.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/socka/kt333/a7v333/e1010_a7v333.pdf If you're losing CMOS, this could be related to your other problems, particularly if you DO have a RAID setup. CMOS is the memory that holds all of your computers' BIOS settings. In most cases with newer machines the computer can still run with the default BIOS settings, although usually not optimally, but it's definitely something to regard with suspicion if it's not holding the date. Heck, maybe you just have a bad mobo. It does happen from time to time.
  12. I hear you, but I still disagree. It's trivial to determine that a mobo has on-board audio. I've built MANY machines, always from scratch, and basically a trained monkey could determine whether a mobo has on-board audio. Also, the A7V-333 isn't THAT new, it came out at the end of March. In motherboard terms that makes it almost middle-aged. Also, pose these questions to your shop: 1. Do you have a RAID array? Since it sounds like you might not know a lot about computer hardware, I suspect the answer is No. RAID support adds expense to the cost of a mobo, and non-RAID versions are almost always available. If you don't know what RAID is, you almost certainly don't need it, so why did you pay for it? ...Asking them, not you. 2. Are you using PC2700 DDR RAM? This is relatively fast memory. If you didn't ask for it, there's a good chance you're using PC2100, which is slightly slower and quite a bit cheaper. And if you're using PC2100 you might as well get the older and cheaper A7V-266e and save money all 'round. And now that I mention the A7V-266e, you should consider that the A7V-333 that you have isn't all that new since it's really just a faster version of the 266e. Again, I'd get a new shop. (BTW, if you had popping with the sound on your old mobo, most likely you had an IRQ conflict, and most likely it's the printer port. This was a well-known problem with older sound cards. Happily those kinds of problems mostly go away with new hardware.)
  13. Ok, so now we have Borg spotting and Borg evaluation. If I understand you correctly, Tank A blows up Tank X but due to the Death Clock, may not know that for quite some time. Meanwhile Tank B rolls into the picture at only half the range. Because of the Death Clock, Tank B now begins shooting Tank X, too, even though it might be close enough to properly identify the tank as dead? Indeed, even if the crew bails, how does another tank know a simply-abandoned tank is dead? Don't get me wrong, the Death Clock is great, the "instant knowledge" thing always bugged me, too, but I think the Borg Mind does play tricks with this feature, too...
  14. I agree, the latter seems most likely. It depends on how carefully Madmatt was watching what he writes (knowing this group as sticklers for details) but he did say "Until the Death Clock expired (ran out) the code would not tell the TacAi or the player that the unit was dead. In effect it was a timer (clock) to hold back that info." and "As long as the TacAi thought the unit was still alive it would continue to engage." Those both appear to indicate communication between the "results" engine and the TacBorg, versus the engine and individual units. It's a great question though, it would be nice to know for sure.
  15. If your shop didn't know you had on-board sound, you DEFINITELY need a new shop...
  16. The kinds of problems you're having do not sound like a virus. I'd start considering another shop, if that was their excuse. Assuming your drivers are good -- which in this case really means, assuming you've tried various combinations of different versions of drivers -- it sounds more like a hardware problem than anything. Just my two cents.
  17. Just as long as we don't get penetration charts of Madmatt, I'll be happy.
  18. Sorry, I'm a habitual thread hijacker from way back. Pre-order is exactly what you think it is. You pay up, and you get your copy eventually. I suppose it's a way of not having to wait those extra few days for your card to clear once the flood of orders begins. Quite a lot of people pre-ordered CMBO. If I remember correctly (and wouldn't that be a feat?) BTC/BTS/KFC/etc ran out of CD's before they filled all the pre-orders. Or was that Celine Dion? I personally don't see the attraction, as it doesn't guarantee you a copy any sooner than the release date anyway, although I guess it lets the hardcore into line early. Yeah, it's kind of like those smelly, hairy dudes who camped out for Star Wars tickets for 26 days before the movie was released... you know, the ones who know WAY too much about how everybody is related in the Star Wars trilogy... or is it a pentilogy? What kind of logy is it? Bah. I clearly need a coffee infusion. But at least now you know. Sort of.
  19. It's a way for all these CM junkies to issue commands to their CMBB troops before they've even bought the game.
  20. Is it losing time, or is it always just incorrect? Since it's a corporate laptop, they may have you set to time synch with a server that's slow. This is happening to me now -- on my company-provided laptop I'm required to time-synch with the servers at the home office -- which are all 11 minutes slow. I guess they figure if all 65,000 of us are 11 minutes slow, it won't matter as much. LOL How old is the laptop?
  21. That's interesting. I've ignored it, but I noticed that too. On my GF2 and GF3 cards it's fine, but on my GF4 view-rotation with the keyboard is very slow. The only difference is that my GF4 machine has a USB keyboard versus a PS2 keyboard on the others. While USB has a much slower polling rate (an issue in games like Quake when using a USB mouse) the keyboard has an artificial repeat rate which is far lower, so I doubt the USB difference is the factor. I verified this (in passing) over a couple different Detonator releases.
  22. It's a trick. Geez, didn't you guys learn anything from all those BMP mod-editing tutorials? When you view it, the pink signature will be rendered transparent. (Doesn't everybody use CM:BO to view bitmaps?)
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