mikeszekely

You guys just hate everything. It was EXACTLY like the original Knight Rider, except with a lamer car. Yeah, I get that most of you wouldn't watch classic Knight Rider now either. Maybe you guys have something against talking cars. But the fact stands that even if you hated it, it's still better than 90% of the garbage on TV these days. Seriously, I post with a bunch of Comic Book Guys... That just goes without saying.

Something like that happened to me once, although I don't know if I'd updated the driver or not. I think I might have. Rather than roll the drive back, I found it worked fine if I disconnected it from the VGA output then connected it to the DVI output with a DVI to VGA adaptor. Haven't had a problem since. I figured maybe there was a problem with my card's VGA output, but I wonder if the problem isn't inherent to the drivers running AGP cards. Man, I need a new desktop.

Okay, for as much as I complained about how lame a Mustang for K.I.T.T. is, I of course watched Knight Rider tonight. I mean, c'mon, it was my favorite show as a kid. I've loved Knight Rider for about as long as I could talk. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one, right? Yeah, I entered the contest. I only want the Shelby Mustang, though, and even then only because it's K.I.T.T. Yeah, it might be a Mustang now, but I've wanted to own K.I.T.T since I was two. Ironically, the new Knight Rider has me itching to buy a Trans Am more than any Ford vehicle. Anyway, with duds like Knight Rider 2000, Team Knight Rider, and Knight Rider 2010, I didn't have high hopes for this show. Some of the stuff in the show, like the nanotech and that hideous second spoiler in Pursuit Mode, are still a little cheesy, but on the whole I really enjoyed it. Without spoilers, let's just say that it went a long way toward capturing the feel of the original show while keeping it in a more modern setting. And for the spoilers,

Perhaps, and I guess I don't mind an install here and there, especially if it's optional. But I don't want to see Capcom (or anyone else for that matter) make a habit of mandatory installs. If I wanted to spend 20 minutes installing a game, I'd have been a PC gamer.

No, the reason why Classics is better than Cybertron (or Energron) is because the toys have good alt modes. Prime was the stupidest-looking firetruck I've ever seen, for example, and that Soundwave/Blaster mold... what is it even supposed to be? A stealth fighter? A spaceship? The original toys were cool because they were cars and planes and jeeps and vans and stuff you might actually see in real life. That was the gimmick, robots in disguise. "Hey, check out this jeep I'm playing with... it's actually Hound!" The downside to those toys is that they were pretty much bricks that you were lucky if they could move their arms. Yeah, Cybertron had some solid, poseable robots. I myself have Cyberton Leader Prime. But Classics gave us poseable robots that looked like real jets, cars, etc.

Mirage was a Deluxe, and he's probably one of my favorite Transformers. Sure, a Voyager Galvatron would be better, but I don't think a Deluxe scales too poorly with the other Classics, since most of them have been Deluxes. Really, only Prime, Jetfire, and Megatron would be bigger from the first line, and from the Universe Classics 2.0, well... I think an Ultra Powerglide breaks the scale anyway.

If/when they release a Serenity Blu-ray, I hope that they include the extras from the newer version of the DVD.

About the hard drives... if you can't get the jumper thing to work right, it might be cheaper to buy an IDE-SATA II PCI card than an enclosure. As for Hackintoshes, I don't run one anymore, since I bought a MacBook, but ironically enough it was a Hackintosh that introduced me to Mac OS and encouraged me to buy a MacBook (and later upgrade to Leopard). Far be it to encourage piracy *hides hard drives*, but taking a clean retail copy of Mac OS and hacking it to run on PC hardware is a HUUUUUUGE pain in the butt. Buy a retail copy of Leopard to assuage your guilt, but it'll be a lot easier if you start looking on bittorrent sites for a pre-hacked version. Oh, and 10.4 Tiger is a single-layer DVD, but 10.5 Leopard is a dual-layer. Also, make sure your hardware is good to go with a Hackintosh. I set mine up on a Pentium 4, and while it ran okay, Quartz applications were a no-go. Hackintoshes work because the development for Tiger occurred when Apple was getting ready to make the switch to Intel processors. The closer your hardware is to Apple-supported, the better it'll run. In fact, getting a Hackitosh to run with an AMD processor is pretty much a hit-or-miss kind of thing. You can read Wikipedia's entry on OSx86 here.

Thanks! Now, to go and change my pants, which I peed in with delight. Galvatron just became my new favorite Classics 2.0.

Cybertron Soundwave repainted as Blaster = not a good toy. I wasn't fond of that mold when it was Soundwave... I don't have permission to see Galvatron.

Star Wars isn't Lucasarts' only franchise. Just to be different, I'm going to say it's a sequel to Grim Fandango.

Dude... I'm reading this post from my HTPC, which ironically enough, is hooked up to my 52" Toshiba DLP HDTV. And for what it's worth, I don't know how their other TVs are, but my TV is hands down one of the better projection TVs I've encountered. Could the 3x number being tossed around be an older figure? The fact that HD-DVDs could be manufactured with minor mods to existing DVD manufacturing equipment would have made HD-DVD cheaper initially, but as studios invested more in Blu-ray equipment and that upfront cost is spread over the millions of discs that have been manufactured, the difference would become negligible.

How so?

*Recalls Quess* Um, that problem doesn't go away in Char's Counterattack... in Gundam in general... ever. At least Judau is a little more upbeat and level-headed and isn't as angsty as some of the other kids who pilot Gundams.

That's what I've been saying. HD-DVD could have locked this thing up if they would have released all of their HD-DVDs as the dual-format discs with the regular DVD on the other side, and for maybe $5 over the price of the regular DVD, not $5 over the price of a Blu-ray or a standard HD-DVD.

Well, as was a lot of your instincts, my friend says that, despite Memtest, he'd bet money on a memory issue. He suggested that I take the RAM stick out of the bank it was in, and put it in a different bank. So I took the PC out of my home theater opened it up, did as he suggested, and fired up NWN2. I played it for over an hour without an issue, and it normally would crash between a half hour and 45 minutes in. So what does that mean? Who knows. While it worked fine for longer than expected, I don't think it worked fine long enough to say the problem was fixed. And even if it turns out that is was, was it changing the RAM banks? Was it getting better air flow with the case off? Was it getting better air flow out of the home theater? I don't know, I don't know, and I don't know. I'll try playing more tonight and see what happens. With luck, my friend was right, although then I'd have to wonder if it's the RAM or the mobo (or maybe the RAM just wasn't seated well). Still, Windows XP only supports 2GB (unless you have the 64 bit version, which I don't), so even if it's a bad slot, I can do like I'm doing and just use one 2GB stick. EDIT: Friend loaned me a 1GB stick of PC 5400 Kingston memory, figuring that's a better brand than Transcend. On a whim, I jammed it into the original RAM slot and fired it up... Windows proudly announced that there's 2.93GB or RAM. And Windows is pretty snappy with 3GB of RAM. Honestly, I'm thinking about giving it back to him and buying a second 2GB PC6400 stick, as Microsoft claims that Windows XP Pro can support 4GB (which, ignore my bad math from before, is the the absolute maximum for a 32-bit OS).

I've used the one linked to Antec, and it suggests that at peak I'd be using 208-212w. I'm thinking about picking up a PSU tester next time I'm out to make sure the one I have is good, but unfortunately 300w is the biggest TFX12v PSU I can find. Honestly, I'm using the bare minimum here... a 35w CPU, two fans, one HDD, one optical drive, one USB receiver for a wireless mouse and keyboard. Everything else is on the board. Honestly, I don't suspect the PSU. While the symptoms I have can indicate a PSU problem, PSU problems are generally more intermittent. I can reliably crash my computer with the same applications every time. From A+ training, I'd be inclined to say it's a thermal issue, but 37 degrees isn't really that hot. Intel rated the maximum operating temp for a Celeron 440 at 61.4, IIRC. If it's not a thermal issue, it's not a BIOS issue (as I've updated and tried default BIOS settings), and not a driver issue (I've updated all my drivers and disabled non-essential devices), then I'm going to have to guess CPU or mobo. As for the Windows thing, I installed Vista when I first built the thing, and had issues right away. I assumed the problem was Vista, so I wiped the drive and did a clean XP install, but the problems persisted. I'm not holding my breath, but I'll see if a friend has a mobo or CPU I can try with this set up. Hopefully I can zero in on the issue and RMA the bad part if necessary.

The Leader Animated toys are looking slick, but I might have to pass and settle for a mix of Voyagers and Deluxes. There's no way I can afford Leader animated toys AND Classics 2.0 at the moment.

I'm trying the Memtest you suggested, Az. It's been running for almost 45 minutes and turned up no errors yet. Oddly, Memtest is reporting my processor as an Intel Nehalem, not a Conroe. I might be able to borrow a mobo, but I don't know if I can borrow a CPU. It would be helpful if I had a way to test the CPU.

Can you skip ZZ? Yeah, you can, since it doesn't do anything to explain what happened to Char after Zeta and how he came to be leading a Neo Zeon movement. Should you skip it? Absolutely not. Yeah, Tomino was a little burned out and depressed after Zeta. And yeah, ZZ starts off as some sort of slaptsick comedy. But after maybe 10-15 episodes, it really starts to pick up fast. All of the villains become less bungling and more sinister. The Gundam team becomes more mature as they're affected by the events going on. By the end of the series, you're back to Zeta levels of goodness.

I guess it might have been helpful to mention this before, but I did run a memory test (not Memtest, though, but I'll try that later). I also ran a disk check. The memory and the hard drive both came up clean. If the CPU's a dud, I can live with that, since it was just the cheapest I could find and intended to upgrade it in the future. Is there a way to test it? I was concerned that it might be a motherboard issue.

Alright, people, I'm at my wits end here. So I figure I'll post here, and let you guys try to figure it out. A quick run down on what the system is... 1.6GHz Celeron 440 Conroe-L 1X 2GB PC6400 DDR2 800 RAM EVGA 112 CK-NF77 microATX motherboard GeForce 7150/nForce 630i chipset In Win BT311T.300SL microATX case w/ 300w TFX12v PSU 500GB IDE Maxtor HDD Lite-On DVD-ROM. Windows XP Professional That's it. The case fan came with the case, the processor heatsink and fan are Intel stock. The BIOS is up to date. I'm using the onboard ethernet and video over HDMI. I'm not currently using any audio, although I was previously using nVidia HDMI audio. There are no PCI or PCIe cards installed, and no floppy drive or card readers. Now, here's the problem. For the most part, the computer is fine. I can browse the internet all day long. I've watched up to a half hour of video with VLC. I've played Neverwinter Nights for two hours before I got tired and went to bed without any issues. However, I can play Neverwinter Nights 2 for maybe a half hour before I get a crash. Joost crashes. World of Warcraft crashes. I haven't tested them again since I installed Windows XP, but I'd previously had Vista on the computer, and in Vista iTunes crashed after maybe four songs, and Windows Media Player didn't quite make it through an album. The screen saver has even caused a crash. When I say crash, mind you, I mean one of four things: 1.) The application freezes. I can kill the application via the Task Manager, and everything else is fine. 2.) The application freezes. I can kill the application via the Task Manager, and everything looks fine. I can open folders and get a response from the keyboard and mouse. However, when I click on an application, I get a busy cursor for a few seconds, but the application (and any others I would try) do not start. Also, telling Windows to shut down would result in the same thing, forcing me to hold down the power button to shut the computer of. 3.) The entire computer freezes. Sound would start skipping when I had it, and the mouse and keyboard were unresponsive. I would have to hold in the power button to shut it off. 4.) The computer reboots for no reason. No errors are given in any of these scenarios. According to the BIOS, the temperatures for both the case and the CPU are between 20-37 degrees C.

Man, I hope it's a Bioware-developed KOTOR III. With the already announced Mass Effect 2 and Jade Empire 2, a KOTOR III would be a trifecta of Bioware goodness to look forward to (not counting the Sonic RPG they're supposedly doing for the DS). About the only thing that could make me happier is if they got Neverwinter Nights back from Obsidian and did the third one themselves.

In Lucas' own words, the 3D show is a continuation of the 2D show. And while Tartakovsky's not involved, the staff is using his work on the previous show as their reference, and in any case, Lucas hired Tartakovsky to do the first one, Tartakovsky didn't pitch it to Lucas. Maybe I'm letting my hopes get to high, but it sounds more like a sequel than a redo. As for why they're not hiring Tartakovsky and his team again, who knows? Maybe Tartakovsky doesn't want to do it. I don't know if he has a blog or anything to get his opinion on the matter, but it sounds like he might be busy running some animation studio full of Lucasfilm vets, as well as pitching an animated version of The Dark Tower to HBO.

That doesn't make it a redo.. From what I've read, it's a continuation. This movie is a pilot for a second Cartoon Network cartoon, and while they're using CGI, they're supposedly retaining the look of the older series.