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plainswalker75 posted:This is a really weird situation, but I'd appreciate any help. Due to some really stupid decisions in the ancient past, our in-house software is hardcoded to only use the HP LaserJet 4 driver and this won't be changed any time soon. One of our teams recently reorganized so that all of their members are now working remotely, from home offices etc. in the field ,but the printers they bought aren't compatible with that driver. Their current workaround is to print to a compatible printer at our main office, have someone scan that document and then email it to them as a PDF; aside from being a really stupid workflow, they are frequently dealing with sensitive information and/or client financial data, so we're looking for a better solution. How does your software communicate with the print driver? If it's specifically looking for a Laserjet 4 print driver in Windows, you're probably boned on the hardware front and will have to think about creating virtual network printers. If it's just stuffing Laserjet 4 compatible print commands down the wire, you're in luck. Older Laserjets all speak a language called HP PCL (Printer Control Language); the LJ4 in particular uses PCL5e. Laserjets were so common for a long time that PCL has become a sort of informal standard, and PCL emulation still is still common across a wide range of business printers (even non-HP models). You might even be able to get away with finding a PCL driver for your current set of "incompatible" printers. If that doesn't work out, the "set up a virtual printer over the network" option is probably going to be your best bet. There are also some Windows software packages out there that provide a virtual PCL printer and output to Postscript or PDF, but they tend to be just as hacky and poorly-supported as the free options.
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Feb 5, 2016 19:55
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Hey, I dusted out my brother's old computer and found this on one of the capacitors: So uh, what's going on here? Is this a bad capacitor that's about to explode? Automata 10 Pack fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Feb 5, 2016 |
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Feb 5, 2016 20:03
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Siochain posted:Recommendations on a decent 450-500W power supply? Supply in my media center gave up the ghost. I've swapped in a working unit, but its older and I don't trust it to last long. I don't need high wattage, but I don't mind paying for quality. I know XFX, Seasonic, etc. are usually good, just wondered if anyone else has stepped up their game (or if any of the kings are bad now). Mutant Standard posted:Hey, I dusted out my brother's old computer and found this on one of the capacitor's:
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Feb 5, 2016 20:11
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Yeah, that's a divot inwards.
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Feb 5, 2016 20:21
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Somebody tried to punch holes in them with a screwdriver or something to justify an early replacement? 
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Feb 5, 2016 20:44
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Yeah, looks like it was tampered with. It's very in the center and so far away from everything so it's very odd to say the least. So uh... Should I turn the computer on? It's a AMD 3 motherboard using an old AMD phenom processor so if it explodes it's not like there'll be a great loss. Automata 10 Pack fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Feb 5, 2016 |
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Feb 5, 2016 20:53
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Sure why not? It will probably even work!
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Feb 5, 2016 20:54
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Turned it on and it seems to work. It said the boot sector is corrupted, but everything else seems to be in working order.
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Feb 5, 2016 21:03
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Is there any good megathread to research hard drives for external back up for my laptop? I.E. what are the brands to avoid, and what;s the best bang for buck options out there? I've heard the best option is to buy an internal hard drive and to couple it with an enclosure or dock? I'm looking for cheap but reliable enough for back up, maybe like 1TB?
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Feb 6, 2016 00:54
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Melian Dialogue posted:Is there any good megathread to research hard drives for external back up for my laptop? I.E. what are the brands to avoid, and what;s the best bang for buck options out there? I've heard the best option is to buy an internal hard drive and to couple it with an enclosure or dock? I'm looking for cheap but reliable enough for back up, maybe like 1TB? There are only 3 actual hard drive manufacturers left: Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital. They have identical long term performance and reliability characteristics. And any other brands are brands of those three, or are reselling drives from those three. For most reliability, you'll want an external drive that uses AC power, and has a 3.5 inch hard drive in it. The reason is that this makes it much more likely that if the guts of the enclosure die, you can stick it into a generic enclosure or desktop PC to get your data back. It also means the power supplied will be more reliable. The reason is that many 2.5 inch, usb-powered drives? They don't actually have a SATA controller, so it gets really hard to recover data if the enclosure circuitry dies. Also: always get a USB 3.0 drive these days. Even if your current devices only support USB 2.0, you'll have USB 3.0 when you replace them, and you'll appreciate the extra speed.
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Feb 6, 2016 01:55
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fishmech posted:There are only 3 actual hard drive manufacturers left: Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital. They have identical long term performance and reliability characteristics. And any other brands are brands of those three, or are reselling drives from those three. Star War Sex Parrot fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Feb 6, 2016 |
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Feb 6, 2016 02:05
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Space Gopher posted:How does your software communicate with the print driver? Yeah, it looks like it's directly looking for the LaserJet 4 driver; I tested with the universal PCL 5 and PCL 6 drivers, but print jobs wouldn't come through from the program. I'm going to investigate setting up a virtual printer and see where that leads us. Thanks!
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Feb 6, 2016 02:24
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Is there any reason to ever have the "turn off hard disk after" setting to anything other than Never? I don't really know what to put this setting on. Google results are saying it's alright to leave it on Never, but I'd rather get some advice from here just to be sure. I'm on Win 7 with a couple of SSDs and an HDD.
Ryuga Death fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Feb 9, 2016 |
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Feb 9, 2016 04:34
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Ryuga Death posted:Is there any reason to ever have the "turn off hard disk after" setting to anything other than Never? I'm on Win 7 with a couple of SSDs and an HDD.
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Feb 9, 2016 04:41
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Ryuga Death posted:Is there any reason to ever have the "turn off hard disk after" setting to anything other than Never? I'm on Win 7 with a couple of SSDs and an HDD. You should set it to like 30 minutes or something, for your (presumably bulk data and no or very few programs) hard drive to shut down and not use as much power. This will also turn your ssds off after a while, but they're ready for data transfer in less than a second, so that's no big issue.
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Feb 9, 2016 04:42
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Alereon posted:It'll reduce noise and power usage, and probably improve the lifespan of your HDDs. From what I remember the stress from spinning up and down is worse than just letting them spin For SSDs its even less since its not pushing power until accessing data.
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Feb 9, 2016 04:55
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^^^^^ Is that true? That's worrying to hear. I don't know what to do, then.  Alereon posted:It'll reduce noise and power usage, and probably improve the lifespan of your HDDs. fishmech posted:You should set it to like 30 minutes or something, for your (presumably bulk data and no or very few programs) hard drive to shut down and not use as much power. This will also turn your ssds off after a while, but they're ready for data transfer in less than a second, so that's no big issue. Thanks, guys. Appreciate the super fast and easy to understand responses. I actually had mine set at 25 minutes for whatever reason, so I'll just leave it at that. I think it's because I have my computer set to go to sleep after an hour of inactivity. Yeah, my HDD has no programs on it, just data like music, pictures, documents, etc.
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Feb 9, 2016 04:55
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I'm in the market for a Network Attached Storage device for backup and media-streaming to Chromecast. I was considering this Synology DS14. But I was also considering building my own NAS to save some $$, and to have some more control over the NAS' form factor. Is this a good enough reason to build my own NAS? Or, should I just quit being a cheapskate and pony up the extra money the DS214?
melon cat fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Feb 9, 2016 |
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Feb 9, 2016 05:31
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Adult Sword Owner posted:From what I remember the stress from spinning up and down is worse than just letting them spin
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Feb 9, 2016 05:36
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Is there such a thing as a 4 port USB 3.1 expansion card? Or would that require too much bandwidth for a PCIe slot to handle? I can find a bunch of 2 port ones but no 4+ port ones. Has no one gotten around to making one yet or is it just not technically possible? I'd even settle for a 3 port one.
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Feb 10, 2016 04:30
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ghetto wormhole posted:Is there such a thing as a 4 port USB 3.1 expansion card? Or would that require too much bandwidth for a PCIe slot to handle?
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Feb 10, 2016 04:52
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I'm looking to replace a 4TB and 3TB external hard drives with an 8TB internal Seagate Archive 8 TB Internal Hard Drive (http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Archive-Internal-Hard-Drive/dp/B00XS423SC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1455089825&sr=8-1&keywords=10tb+hard+drive) I don't know what an 'archive' HD is, what I'm wanting to use it for is storing a ton of media files. I don't think the speed matters as I'll only need enough to play video for one PC (no streaming over a network or anything) but I'm not sure if 'archive' means it can't even do that.
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Feb 10, 2016 08:42
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fishmech posted:Do not purchase a new AMD chip. Either keep your hardware as is, or buy a low end Intel chip (i3 or even Pentium) and motherboard and get significantly improved performance. You'd just be wasting your money buying a 7 year old processor for barely any improvement. I decided not to upgrade any hardware, clean-installed Windows 7 64-bit, and upgraded to Windows 10 immediately. The PC runs the same as it did before, but it now has access to more of my RAM (Vista only supports 4 GB, but I have 6) and better support for my SSD. Thanks for the advice; AMD Phenom II x6 CPUs faster than 3Ghz are selling on eBay for $130-150 with lots of bids and I almost bought one. Glad I didn't, so far. ghetto wormhole posted:Is there such a thing as a 4 port USB 3.1 expansion card? Or would that require too much bandwidth for a PCIe slot to handle? Botnit posted:I don't know what an 'archive' HD is, what I'm wanting to use it for is storing a ton of media files. I don't think the speed matters as I'll only need enough to play video for one PC (no streaming over a network or anything) but I'm not sure if 'archive' means it can't even do that. "Archive" doesn't seem to mean anything special. It only goes up to 5900 RPM, as opposed to the average 7200 RPM. I think you will notice a performance difference if you want to use this as your primary boot drive for your OS. If it's a secondary drive, it would matter less. For just playing video it should work, and it'll probably be faster than your external HDs, especially if they are slower than 7200 RPM. (and they often are).
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Feb 10, 2016 16:02
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Ema Nymton posted:This one has 3. But maybe waiting a while for newer 3.1 cards would help. quote:"Archive" doesn't seem to mean anything special. It only goes up to 5900 RPM, as opposed to the average 7200 RPM. I think you will notice a performance difference if you want to use this as your primary boot drive for your OS. If it's a secondary drive, it would matter less. For just playing video it should work, and it'll probably be faster than your external HDs, especially if they are slower than 7200 RPM. (and they often are). E: Btw this is a brand new tech so don't feel bad about not being familiar, they are really still focused at businesses because of all the downsides for consumers. All previous drives optimized for storage or archiving were just optimized for big files and lower power like you said. Alereon fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Feb 10, 2016 |
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Feb 10, 2016 16:13
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Oh.  Now that you've explained it, an archive HD would work for my video collection, which has both downloads and DVD backups. After I save a video file, I usually never delete or change it. EDIT: V V V I don't know much, but I think you should just put your new torrent downloads on another drive, probably your main one, until they are complete. After it's done, determine if you really want to keep the file. If you do, put it into storage on the drive, or if not, delete it. This is how I handle all my files, so I can make backups of new files before I put them away. As for seeding it might work, since it's being read and not written, but seeding is like donating-- just do what you can. Ema Nymton fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Feb 10, 2016 |
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Feb 10, 2016 16:29
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Alereon posted:Actually in this case "Archive" does mean something special, these drives use the new Shingled Magnetic Recording technology that is intended for data that will be written and then never changed. You *can* go back and change files, but it's very slow compared to other drives. This actually does make it pretty good for holding media files, but *awful* for torrenting to. Whoa, I already ordered it and it's meant to hold stuff I'm downloading through torrents, but I'm human garbage who doesn't seed. My internet maxes out at 2MB/s. Am I fine or should I be cancelling this order asap? To clarify I use an SSD for Windows, all my torrents will download to the Archive drive. Worst case scenario I guess I could change my download location to my SSD since it's 400gb but would be kinda annoying. Botnit fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Feb 10, 2016 |
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Feb 10, 2016 16:32
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Botnit posted:Whoa, I already ordered it and it's holding stuff I'm downloading through torrents, but I don't seed ever. My internet maxes out at 2MB/s. Am I fine or should I be cancelling this order asap? E: Here's a decent summary of the technology. For every piece of the torrent downloaded the drive would need to re-write an entire shingle of data. There are multiple layers of caching to make this less awful but it will still be dog slow, as it's the exact opposite of how the drive is meant to be used. Alereon fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Feb 10, 2016 |
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Feb 10, 2016 16:37
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Alereon posted:Cancel immediately and get a decent Western Digital HDD, these Archive drives are meant for writing data in big blocks and will not handle writing data in small chunks as with torrenting. Seeding would actually be fine, but not downloading. Thanks, cancelled in time. Can't find any 8TB+ WD internal or externals, but here's a Seagate external for the same price as the Archive (http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Deskt...rnal+hard+drive). I think internals are supposed to last longer and take less power but since I'm literally replacing two externals with it I think it's still good? I don't really want to bother with going with any HDD's lower than 8TB and none of the stuff being held on it is super vital stuff I'd kill myself for losing, what do you think?
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Feb 10, 2016 16:56
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Botnit posted:Thanks, cancelled in time. Since the other 8TB drives are so much more expensive I would suspect that external drive has a same kind archive drive inside, and this Storage Review article agrees. You're better off using the internal or get a NAS. One option with the torrents is to use the SSD as temporary storage for torrents and move the finished torrent to the archive drive. Torrent software should be able to do this automatically.
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Feb 10, 2016 17:49
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I have 2 very old IDE/PATA hard drives in my Plex server and one of them just popped up some errors in CDI: Would now be a good time to remove it from my drive pool? Or is it still viable as a Plex Media Server storage source? I guess I should remove both IDE drives eventually... lmao.
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Feb 10, 2016 18:07
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Botnit posted:Thanks, cancelled in time. teagone posted:I have 2 very old IDE/PATA hard drives in my Plex server and one of them just popped up some errors in CDI:
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Feb 10, 2016 18:07
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Alereon posted:It's dying, remove it ASAP. Figured as much. Time to finally retire my last 2 PATA drives for good. 
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Feb 10, 2016 18:11
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We have an old Acer laptop that we use as HTPC in our family room. The machine had an Intel P6000 weaksauce processor that I recently upgraded to still-ancient, but 50% faster i5-560M. While disassembling the laptop I saw something that I have a question about. What is this little connector? It looks like it says "mini 2" on the motherboard. Is this an mSATA connector? 
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Feb 10, 2016 18:32
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PBCrunch posted:We have an old Acer laptop that we use as HTPC in our family room. The machine had an Intel P6000 weaksauce processor that I recently upgraded to still-ancient, but 50% faster i5-560M. While disassembling the laptop I saw something that I have a question about. That's a Mini PCI Express slot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#PCI_Express_Mini_Card, generally used for WiFi/bluetooth cards. It might also be an mSATA connector, but you should look up the datasheet for the laptop to make sure.
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Feb 10, 2016 19:27
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Welp Amazon didn't cancel it after all so now I get to try out the Archive HDD anyway. Hopefully your idea of slow isn't my idea of slow, or I can just download to my SSD and then move it over to the Archive for keeping.
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Feb 10, 2016 19:52
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Botnit posted:Welp Amazon didn't cancel it after all so now I get to try out the Archive HDD anyway. Hopefully your idea of slow isn't my idea of slow, or I can just download to my SSD and then move it over to the Archive for keeping.
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Feb 10, 2016 21:15
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Ema Nymton posted:This one has 3. But maybe waiting a while for newer 3.1 cards would help. That one's kind of interesting. It's like a weird in between card. They went full retard when they decided the naming scheme so the former USB 3.0 ports are now 3.1 rev1 (5gbps) and the latest ones are 3.1 rev2 (10gbps), additionally there are the new Type-C connectors which were released with the rev2 specification. Technically Type-C ports could be either rev1 or rev2 but since they came out with the rev2 standard I didn't think anyone would bother making rev1 Type-C ports. This weird little card actually did that so the new port runs at the old speed and will be half as fast as probably every other Type-C port that ever gets made. I just went ahead and ordered a 4 port USB 3.0 card since I'm out of ports on my PC and the extra speed isn't really necessary for me. I was just hoping to stay a little ahead of the game if such a thing existed but oh well, I'm sure there'll be an affordable 4+ port 3.1 rev2 card by the time devices actually start coming out that use the new speeds and Type-C connectors. Or maybe Thunderbolt or whatever will take over who knows! my kinda ape fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Feb 10, 2016 |
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Feb 10, 2016 22:35
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My system locked up and had video artifacts after being on and idle for 3 weeks. Xeon e3 1276v3, Gigabyte Z97 mATX board and MSI 970. Temps check out, and they're all brand new. The only old parts from my previous system is the PSU, a cooler master 500w and an Intel 330 SSD. I'm 99 percent certain it's the PSU, but it's only 3 years old. The only other thing I can think of is that my copy of Windows is a beta copy of Server 2016. Is there anything else I should be looking at?
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Feb 11, 2016 01:24
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Laslow posted:My system locked up and had video artifacts after being on and idle for 3 weeks. Xeon e3 1276v3, Gigabyte Z97 mATX board and MSI 970. Temps check out, and they're all brand new. The only old parts from my previous system is the PSU, a cooler master 500w and an Intel 330 SSD. I'm 99 percent certain it's the PSU, but it's only 3 years old. The only other thing I can think of is that my copy of Windows is a beta copy of Server 2016. Is there anything else I should be looking at? Your PSU wouldn't cause video artifacting like that. It's probably this in order: Your beta of 2016, Drivers (Probably due to the beta), or your GPU.
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Feb 11, 2016 01:47
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Actually, I had crazy artifacting during Windows installation with a lovely yet brand new Diablotek PSU that came with a case for my friends bottom-dollar build. It only had a Celeron and integrated video, so no stress at all and it was rated 400w. What a piece of poo poo.
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Feb 11, 2016 02:03
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