Oolite Bulletins

Dr. Nil wrote:

You probably got too close to the truth with Orb.oxp and they had to shut you down.

No-one expects the Commie Thought Police!!!!

Captain Hesperus
"I though that red cloak was familiar..."

Commander McLane wrote:

Actually it's East Africa, which is technologically spoken way more back than Antarctica, where most of the inhabited places would be (I guess) well-equipped research stations.

I guessed Africa… but I thought there was a licensed Apple thingymabob in Jo’burg. Not actually useful, but the same continent.

Commander McLane wrote:

Well, okay. Where I am living we have got an ISP that is guaranteeing me the unbelievable speed of (Fasten Your Seatbelts, Ladies And Gentlemen!) 5 Kbps.

Hmm. I heard Africa Online were offering DSL in Kenya.

Great to hear Charlie!

Does that mean the BIOS exchange fixed matters. Any way to ensure that does not happen again? Can you get a flash program an a BIOS image at least?

Charlie: Not all is lost! If you can replace the motherboard and get a copy of Windows XP (you should be able to get a replacement CD if you can contact Microsoft and prove somehow that you bought an original), you can perform what's known as a 'Repair Reinstall' which will just reinstall the core operating system -- your files and installed programs will remain intact! I had to do this to a parent's PC when the motherboard died, and it worked like a charm. A few problems popped up, but those were easily fixed. Please note that this is only required if your new motherboard is different from the old one (as the drivers Windows tries to load will cause it to BSOD upon boot).

For cheap hardware, I'd recommend checking out PriceWatch.

If you want to continue on with this, I'd be more than happy to walk you through the steps and any of the bumps that occur!

hang on - if the mobo died and not the HDD, all your files will be intact : surely you could get a second machine (friend, get yourself a new one, whatever) and connect your HDD as a slaved drive - it should allow you to pull off whatever you need.

I got the impression from some of Charlie's other posts (actually it was probably a PM) that he has some very complicated and restricted licensing agreements for some of his software apps (and "changing hardware" will kill off the licenses).

:-/

dunno then, the way PCs are you'd think any company would take into account allowing reinstall on other machines after rebuilds. i know XP and PShop were okay when i got my new machine, usually as long as you quote the security codes they shouldn't mind....i'd've thought..

Hi,
Thanks for all the positive comments guys...

My Pc is up and running again!

Thankfully it was 'just' a corrupted BIOS, so one replacement chip later...

Oh, & I hot-flashed the old BIOS, so now I have a spare if this happens again!

DFI Ultra-B great motherboard ( for it's age ) but does have a habbit of doing this!

( The guy who supplied the BIOS was very helpful - I wouldn't hesitste to reccemend him if any have similar problems )

Hopefully it won't be long now before I post a 'plan B' CobraIII for general perusal. If it goes down well, I'll tidy it up & get on with the other things mentioned on Dr Nil's thread.

In case anyone is remotely interested:
I'm a bit of an old hacker + PC moder ( parenthood robs me of the resources or time for such things now - along with less interest in such things )
My box was 'Les testicules du chien' in it's day:
Above mobo, water-cooled, DDR500 ram, XP-M 2600+ running just under 3gig...
Still not bad in otherwords...
Part of my fiddling was me getting fed-up looking for a copy of Linux that I didn't loath. ( BeOS is great, but rather unsuported )
I discovered a while ago that WinXP is a good OS. If you remove all the pointless gubbins M$ lumbered it with.
So...
I made a striped-out version.
Then...
I did a version that has had everything removed not relevent to my needs / hardware. Runs v.v. well
But...
Here the rub: My current install will not work with any other hardware! I went a bit crackers with the 3D modeling software ( don't like Wings - sorry ) & got 3DsMax. It's tied to your current install - Doh!
So...
New hardware = fresh install of XP ( upgrade not poss ) = non-functioning copy of 3DS = no more models!. Hence the reason for being a bit stuffed recently...

Recent events have worried me. ( esp as my hardware is old, pushed v hard & Ultra-B's are getting like rockng-horse poo to find )

Solution?
Fingers crossed for now.
I'm looking for a DFI LanParty UT NF4 SLI-DR Expert on flea-bay. It uses much the same drivers, so I will hopefully have a migration path...

Long - boaring story over.

Charlie wrote:

Thankfully it was 'just' a corrupted BIOS, so one replacement chip later...

Oh, & I hot-flashed the old BIOS, so now I have a spare if this happens again!

That'll be the Trumble Inside (TM)

Captain Hesperus
"Trumbles! Trumbles! Get yer hot and crispy Trumbles!"