Blog In Progress

08:29: Bloody hell!! those damn courier people. You spend all day waiting for them and they never show up, but on a Saturday when you're fast asleep (was playing RE4 till late, GREAT game), and the damn buzzer goes rrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiinggggggggggggggggg. It's the courier man, with 6 boxes. Hauled them in (lucky I live in ground floor), and here they are on the floor


08:54: Surfing around on the net with powerbook in bed. That's a great thing of having a wireless laptop, freedom! Was gonna go to sleep but who can resist all this stuff lying around eh? gotta choose something to listen to while I do this. Oasis or Coldplay? both perhaps. I go make a strong coffee and dive in.


09:29: Just unpacked everything, and *nearly* broke the case! I've ordered too much shit, and there's so many packets to get rid of. Oh and that abit mobo pack KICKS ASS! if only it didn't have the picture of that guy on it that's good at games.


09:40: OMG! This mobo is awesome! it's got a front panel, tons of options, some kickass fans and other crap I haven't heard of. My fault for not upgrading the pc since 3 years :s


09:44: It's very reassuring to say the least, to know that your spanking new cpu comes packaged in recycled egg cartons. Maybe I should've stuck with intel.



09:57: OK Mobo half installed. I've mounted it in case and I'm trying to make sure I wire all those awkward wires you only find out about AFTER you've installed all the cards..... You know the feeling


10:23: I BET YOU I've installed those bloody usb header wires wrong! why don't they just charge us 50p more and put a damn connector. Gonna try to figure out this SLi thing now.

10:57: Ok, so I've finally managed to connect those huge geforces and I hope set them up for SLi properly. oof. Right, problem is, is my sound blaster gonna fit in there, beneath them beasts? I don't wanna end up using the mobo's default sound card do I...


11:18: Barely fits.......


12:00: Had a bit of an interruption from brother calling me moaning about his set of nights he just finished. Trying to squeezy my hard drives in (should've installed them BEFORE the geforces). I'm cut and bruised all over

12:28: OK. I think I've finished assembling everything inside the case. I had to dismantle the geforces to get to some connectors, but everything seems to be back in place now. Gonna wash my hands and hold my breath, here comes the power!!

12:37: IT'S ALIVE! yeap it seems to be breathing quietly in the corner, stuck with nothing to boot from though. I wonder if I should risk closing the case or installing windows first then closing it just in case... I think I might just install windows


13:09: Please enter your regional settings. Same old BS.

13:26: It's crashed.

13:45: OK I'm stuck offline with a half working pc. Problem is that the LAN driver is crashing windows. This 64bit xp isn't as cool as they say it is, especially that it needs new drivers (remember Win95/NT?!). Thank God I have a powerbook that's online

14:34: Found out a few problems: first, my boot drive is G: That sux. second, I've connected the 2 76gig raptors on different RAID controllers. Works but would be better if they're on the same. So I've taken out the 2nd geforce (cos it's the one blocking all the connectors), reconnected the hdds and disconnected the media disk reader (it had become c:). Reinstalling windows now. I'm hungry. Only had that cup of MARIO coffee earlier. I go fry eggs.

15:03: Time for a cup of TOM tea ;)


15:22: PC is online now! got the network sorted out, problem is that it thinks it's got one GPU instead of 2. Let's see...

15:45: Ok, not sure if I'm reading this right, but apparantely SLi is NOT supported on windows xp64bit. Hmm weird that, what's the use of providing a 64bit mobo with SLi but no O/S to support it. I really can't be arsed to install windows XP home edition now though, or maybe I will...

16:03: I might just install H/E. This xp64 business sucks, and problem is I went and paid for the damn thing! I should've read around the net before buying it. I'm sure it'll be useful in the near future when complete drivers are out for it. In the meantime, I wait for all my old files to copy from the old seagate to the new raptors... 55% through of 120gig........ I think I go play some Alien Hominid while this carries on.....

16:56: I think I've heard Coldplay's X&Y album a million times now. It's a great album though, and I think they should carry on with the same style, rather than "evolve". Couldn't get SLi to work on xp64 at all, so I install H/E now. Damn

17:12: wow! H/E already installed. Time to do drivers then see if this damn SLi thing works

17:38: well at least now the computer says it's ready for SLi! Just going to do a windows update and update all drivers to new, then maybe try out 3dmark2005, or the ever great doom3...

18:07: Right. XP H/E is up and running... sp2 is downloading now (it'll take ages), and everything seems to be stable enough for me to pop out to the gym. I hope to come back and find that it hasn't crashed. Until now it's been blazingly fast, not only cos I just fresh installed but I think the raptors know how to dish the data out.
Gym time....

20:50: Back from gym, computer has managed to install SP2 relatively event-free. I also did some shopping for a BBQ we're doing now. The weather is cool but who cares when the PC is so more important than the sun... Installing the last windows updates now, and the latest creative sbaudigy 2 drivers. After that I'm gonna do a default run of 3dmark05 and see what happens.

02:40: done with bbq, and pc managed to get 9000 points on 3dmark05 (is that good? I haven't got a clue). Disaster struck when the damn case fell off the table onto a 10 point extension lead! Has a big dent at the top now (not very visible), but it wouldn't let me close the side slides without a bit of DIY. All sorted now. Seems to be working as well. No time to check games now, I'm feeling really sleepy.