Oolite Bulletins

SevenT wrote:

El Viejo wrote:

You may be able to buy/have fitted a graphics card - it depends on whether the motherboard has a slot for it.
Best seek the advice of a friendly geek/local computer shop - it could cost as little as $30-40, maybe even less.

Ohhhh.... shute... I know I am going to bite into this one as well... BUT.... does a graphic card just slot into the back of a PC like the old D-Link, Via SATA and USB expansion connectors did?

Or have I got it completely wrong - yet again?

El Viejo wrote:

It's most likely an internal job, I'm afraid.

I'm pretty sure the expansion connectors that SevenT referred to are the type that are fitted internally.

In which case, yes, you would need to open the case and slot the graphics card into the special slot reserved for graphics cards. As there have been a few different graphics slots over the years, SevenT, the exact kind your computer requires would need to be checked by, as EV suggested, a friendly geek or your local computer shop. I'd strongly recommend that you go for a Nvidia-based card, preferably with at least 512 MB of RAM.

El Viejo wrote:

Diziet Sma wrote:

... I'm agog with anticipation!

Is that Gog or Magog, Diz?

Given my status as an ex-Jehovah's Witness (ancient history now, thankfully) probably both..

El Viejo wrote:

I haven't got the right image yet (I keep getting distracted by bandits, and using the fly-by cam in a firefight is tricky), so I'm using this one for the moment (it's 1280x1024 and 5MB, if you wanna try it).

Thanks! Lookin' good! (1280x1024 perfectly fits one side of my dual-monitor 2560x1024 setup)

The Gog Magog Hills in Cambridgeshire - there is ancient history there, some say.

Diziet Sma wrote:

SevenT wrote:

El Viejo wrote:

You may be able to buy/have fitted a graphics card - it depends on whether the motherboard has a slot for it.
Best seek the advice of a friendly geek/local computer shop - it could cost as little as $30-40, maybe even less.

Ohhhh.... shute... I know I am going to bite into this one as well... BUT.... does a graphic card just slot into the back of a PC like the old D-Link, Via SATA and USB expansion connectors did?

Or have I got it completely wrong - yet again?

El Viejo wrote:

It's most likely an internal job, I'm afraid.

I'm pretty sure the expansion connectors that SevenT referred to are the type that are fitted internally.

In which case, yes, you would need to open the case and slot the graphics card into the special slot reserved for graphics cards. As there have been a few different graphics slots over the years, SevenT, the exact kind your computer requires would need to be checked by, as EV suggested, a friendly geek or your local computer shop. I'd strongly recommend that you go for a Nvidia-based card, preferably with at least 512 MB of RAM.

Oh that's no problem slotting in a graphics card if it is just a case of slotting in a card to an existing socket into a standard motherboard.... All three of my computers run with their cases open. I am quite used to slotting things in and out of them.

Money isn't really a problem - I am just concerned about whether I'd be turbo-charging a Reliant Supervan... ultimately a bit pointless - but damn good fun!

SevenT wrote:

Money isn't really a problem - I am just concerned about whether I'd be turbo-charging a Reliant Supervan... ultimately a bit pointless - but damn good fun!

Cool.. in that case, take a look at the specs of the first computer in my sig.. the one I play Oolite on. The motherboard is 10 years old, and the CPU is a slug by today's standards, but it has a good whack of RAM and a reasonably ok, if aging, 512MB graphics card, and it copes pretty well with Oolite running full shaders and loads of graphically heavy OXPs, such as Povray Planets, Griff ships, YAH, extra ships, stations, and so on (over 200 OXPs, all told). The only time it really bogs down is on hyperspace jumps, as the CPU has a lot of work to do generating everything in the new system before I arrive. Generally, it will 'freeze' for 10-12 seconds in the middle of a jump.

Despite the lack of horsepower, I find I enjoy Oolite much more on the clunker than I do the second machine in my sig, the laptop, because of the cruddy hard-wired-in graphics that it has.

So the moral of the story is, the system RAM and graphics card are the most important parts of the equation for running Oolite, and those are both easily sorted on desktop computers. And on Windows, if you want/need to free up your system resources as much as possible, there's an excellent freeware program called GameBooster which you can use to shut down every non-essential process that's running in the background.

Diziet Sma wrote:

SevenT wrote:

Money isn't really a problem - I am just concerned about whether I'd be turbo-charging a Reliant Supervan... ultimately a bit pointless - but damn good fun!

Cool.. in that case, take a look at the specs of the first computer in my sig.. the one I play Oolite on. The motherboard is 10 years old, and the CPU is a slug by today's standards, but it has a good whack of RAM and a reasonably ok, if aging, 512MB graphics card, and it copes pretty well with Oolite running full shaders and loads of graphically heavy OXPs, such as Povray Planets, Griff ships, YAH, extra ships, stations, and so on (over 200 OXPs, all told)..

Oh FFS stop teasing me will you?

You lot are a bunch of "people who were born out of wedlock"....

You know I am OCD.... Jeez why are you people doing this to me.... You know that I now have to go back into the spare bedroom and dig out all my IBM 300GLs - OH SNAP!!!!!!!

Bravo - you made me go and revisit an obsession Mister "Diziet Sma" (which I take to be an anagram of "Sam Tizied") the well known Kentish millionaire, philanthropist and occasional camel sodomiser.

You are naughty Mister Sma - or may I just call you Smahhhhhhhhh.....?

You know you want me to get those two IBM300GLs out of storage and running OOlite...

Number 6: You won't get it.
Number 2: By hook or by crook, we will.
Number 6: Who are you?
Number 2: The new Number 2.
Number 6: Who is Number 1?
Number 2: You are Number 6.
Number 6: I am not a number, I am a free man.

and I also don't want to dig those IBM300GLs out of storage....

No really I don't....

Seriously it is not going to happen!



Seriously!



I mean it....


Okay I just went and had a look at them....


No seriously I am not going there....


Bahhhhh......

i'll have whatever he's having

Griff wrote:

i'll have whatever he's having

Actually you wouldn't.... and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy - just like Tourette's Syndrome....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/artic ... rokes.html

I left my previous message up there in its unedited (and totally embarrassing - to me) entirety so that users of this board might understand that not all of us are perfect - and that not all disability is seen by physical or mental handicaps.

Like those who live with mild Tourette's - it is possible to suffer very many minor cerebral infarctions without having suffering damage to the intellect.

It reminds me of the case of the BBC Radio DJ "Stuart Henry"... His colleagues thought he was permanently drunk - because he began slurring his words and sometimes stumbled when walking... in fact he had the first stages of Multiple Sclerosis. After he left the Beeb in 1974 he then went on to work with Radio Luxembourg for many years until his death.

I am a million light years away from trying to pull in some additional sympathy about MS sufferers but I would like to say that this is supposed to be the "friendliest board" this side of Riedquat" - and so I therefore hope that this "friendliness" extends beyond the apparently "normal" acceptable limits.


ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Henry_%28DJ%29
ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourette_syndrome

Griff wrote:

i'll have whatever he's having

It's called "Knights moves in psychiatry... It's similar to lateral thinking... something we were all used to try to do before the advent of "PONG"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight%27s_move_thinking

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_thinking

Just because you cannot see a logical connection between the moves in mind or speech - it does not necessarily mean there isn't one. The move a knight makes on a chess board is totally illogical to someone who has not fully been taught the rules of chess or draughts - to think that a piece can move by 2x1 or 1x2 in any direction (back wards or forwards) as long as they do not land on an occupied square is bewildering to new chess players.

Merely because I do not smoke a pipe, wear a cardigan, have a beard, use a Mac, use an iPhone/iPad/iPod/iToilet/iFleshube or use YouTube/Twitter/FaceBook/(any) Google services to merely give away all my internet details to the "Big Brother" snooping services of GCHQ and the FBI/CIA/HSA... PLUS Zellers, Target, Wallmart et al... does that make me such an outcast from this site?

I think not... I might slip up occasionally - but let he who is without sin cast the first ICE ASTEROID.... (and then duck!)

Am I the only (and first) one who has made himself look like a total dickhead on this website?

Yeah.... well... don't all shout, too loud, at once!...


BTW the paragraph...

"We want information..."

Number 6: You won't get it.
Number 2: By hook or by crook, we will.
Number 6: Who are you?
Number 2: The new Number 2.
Number 6: Who is Number 1?
Number 2: You are Number 6.
Number 6: I am not a number, I am a free man.

Is a quote from the intro sequence from the original 1960's TV program called "The Prisoner" starring Patrick McGoohan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14eUKogPF7s

McGoohan's strong but perpetually bewildered character "Number 6" is responding to (through the constantly rotating - and seemingly endless - "Number 2" characters) an ultimately responsible character called "Number 1" - whom we never ever get to see...

I simply aligned my initial confusion of entering into this particular BB and the arrogance of some of the old-school "cardigans" on this board as being similar to "Danger Man" having been dumped into "The Village."

BTW - I never stopped being 13 years-old 45 years ago - I still as adept at TWUNTERY as I was back then!....


Oh and YES... I can use the word TWUNTERY because I was the first one to define it (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=SevenT) eight years ago on the Urban Dictionary.


Just answering a point - no need to shovel this off to a "flame-war" section or a "new topic" - I am sure that the "Splash screen doesn't splash!" readers will forgive this tiny little diversion....

Carry on... Nothing to see here...

Interesting to know, SevenT, and a useful reminder that things are not always what they seem..

Thanks for reminding us that there are real, imperfect human beings behind the keyboards..