Ahoy the Marie-Celeste!Hello?Damme it's quiet here.Have you all Fled?Happy easter.

Hi,Yes, very quiet for a while. Me personally, I'm out of "gaming" for a while as my video card is near at its end. Will be saving on a new one, but, that would have to be a 4650 agp from HIS which means I'd have to get a new psu first.Ordered the Antec Neo Eco 620c as I've read that its actually a repackaged Seasonic s12ii 620. Bad timing all this because I've been sssslowly buying parts for a "new" build.For the new build I had already purchased a gigabyte 790fxta-ud5, amd phenom II x2 555be calisto, zaward vapor120 cpu cooler. I had intended to purchase a psu for it next(I could've installed it right away)and later a pci-e gpu card (evga gtx460 maybe)and ram, but not this soon. But my agp graphics card started going out on me on this desktop, so went ahead and ordered that psu mentioned above. Probably will get a replacement agp card next couple of months. My "new build" is going to be an antique by the time I get done.For now I can for a short while get a 3d accelerated display but can't go no higher than 1024x764 60mhz refresh in games and I get sparkles and bands/stripe/tears at times.I took the card out and used a can of air on it to make sure the cooler and fan were clean but didn't help any.I have my 2 old agp cards nearby for backup when this card finally goes out all the way.and oh yes, not long after I ordered that psu, my home a/c went out. luvly. you all take care,jimb :( Johnny Cash: ....Well, It's a '49, '50, '51, '52, '53, '54, '55, '56, '57, '58' 59' ..........

I "fled" up the coast the other day :(

I "fled" up the coast the other day  :(

Wow, Fantastic work Hans!  :dance:jimb     

Chris Wooding, on writing his novel,'The Fade':

... and as usual I despised the book by the end and wished dearly that I’d never started. But once it was done I loved it again.

I'd had enough of FU3 for ever after all the irritation of MWH coupled with my very buggy installation but I have it running pretty smoothly now.Jim, what a tale. The air con must be quite a disaster at this time of year. You'll have to shack up with your PC, inside your refrigerator.Hans, that looks good enough possibly to push me into installing the extended Seattle / Vancouver and starting on some new airfields. I must be ill. Or stupid...Regards,D

The new psu should arrive this Friday evening. I am hoping that my psu is beginning to fail and is causing the video card to look bad. If the psu doesn't fix it, I think I'm going to try the "bake" method on the video card. That is, strip it down and bake it in the oven for a bit and see if it will magically repair itself. (As these folks are reporting at the below link.)http://www.overclock...t=606658&page=4Was working on my a/c unit in the back yard when a storm kind of blew up. Heard a muffled thud behind me. Ah yes, my chimney cap decides it could do a much better job of it embedded in the lawn. jimb

Dave and Juvat, no matter what your problems are they're certainly fixable. Regarding hardware, could it be that a thunderstorm has zapped it? It's fairly cheap to add a power surge protection to the computer and it's totally free to unplug everything when it's not being used :-) The other hardware killer is heat. An extra fan unit may be a good investment. Gaming and simming generate a lot more heat than ordinary web browsing. Regarding the extended hi-res region it's rock solid with no hiccups. All it takes is better hi-res megatiles. There are two challenges, finding usable maps and the exact positioning of the map textures on the elevation grid. I might upload some accurate place holder megatiles that make the coastlines and the mountains fit the elevation grid. However, no matter which source of satellite ortho-photos one chooses there'll be a lot of editing to reach a good result. I tried to colorize some black and white textures--it's a lot of work but those did turn out fine. In the process it became quite evident that the original Looking Glass megatiles are in fact derived from colorized black and white images. By the way, the free Gimp image editor is quite powerful when you need to work with layers.

The new psu should arrive this Friday evening. I am hoping that my psu is beginning to fail and is causing the video card to look bad. If the psu doesn't fix it, I think I'm going to try the "bake" method on the video card. That is, strip it down and bake it in the oven for a bit and see if it will magically repair itself. (As these folks are reporting at the below link.)http://www.overclock...t=606658&page=4Was working on my a/c unit in the back yard when a storm kind of blew up. Heard a muffled thud behind me. Ah yes, my chimney cap decides it could do a much better job of it embedded in the lawn. jimb

Hi Jim.Working in industrial electronics makes me wonder about that trick. The failures mentioned in that thread have two probable sources, both caused by vibration (fan...). Either a solder joint has fractured or the card has become sufficiently misaligned to lose contact with the motherboard. Some of the recoveries are likely to be the result of reomving the card and refitting it, thereby realigning the pins on the card with the contacts in the socket. Try that first and blow all the crud out of the socket while you're there. Methanol and a q-tip are good for cleaning the gold fingers on the card.If it doesn't work, then go for the oven trick. Personally, I'd only try it on a card I was planning to scrap, as the heat is likely to prematurely age other components on the card. Electrolytic capacitors have a fairly low temperature rating and if your home environment is humid surface mounted components will have absorbed moisture. Don't bake it for too long or they'll die. In essence, all that's being achieved is the reflowing of solder joints. If your card is lead-free, the solder may not flow sufficiently at the suggested temperature to repair a joint and you'll be left with a partly faulty card with even less of a life span ahead of it.Definitely a last straw to clutch at.Regards,D

well...........I received the new psu, install went smooth. Didn't fix my issue. So, took the card out and disassembled.Cleaned off the gpu and the memory chips. The rams use pads so where ever it looked to me that a pad was "saggy", I "fluffed" them back up. Cleaned the chip, pads, cooler surfaces with coffee filter and alcohol. The new Zaward Vapor120 cpu cooler I mentioned previously had a small syringe of thermal paste in it so used a small dab of that for the gpu. Put all together and re-installed the card. Ran it through 3dMark06 but it wouldn't have none of that and crash about halfway through. Furmark the same. All my graphics intensive games said, "Huh?"So, I decided to take a crash course on gpu bios flashing for increasing cooler fan speed. Reflashed the card with fan speed set to 0-70c 70% fan rpm all the way up to 90c - 90% fan rpm. Man than fan was blowing its tail off; but really I knew it couldn't be that because with the ati ccc 9.3 I was able to observe the gpu temp and before I modded the fan speed, it would idle around 40 to 46c.So next step I think is to disassemble and bake it. The card has a rialto chip on the back that has a pink thermal pad stuck to it. I'll have to remember to remove that pad as well before I bake it. I've been putting off the baking though.Don't think getting vapors in fishsticks would garner me high praise from the kids. :( In meanwhile I decided what the heck and did a winxp repair install just for "funzies". 10 jillion hours later I'm back to where I was a week ago. :( I'm running on the little VisionTek X1600XT 256mb agp for now. She's slow, but functional. jimb

So next step I think is to disassemble and bake it... ...I've been putting off the baking though.

Jim,Did you have a go at it in the end. How did it work?And how's the aircon? Do you realise we could all combat global warming by the simple expedient of leaving our refrigerator doors open?D

My a/c is still inop. On "cool" days I dare to turn on the laptop and pc. Today weather channel shows 80ish deg F so I turned it all on. Got my box fan blowing into this little room.As for my Sapphire x1950agp; the baking was a no go; made it worse actually. So I checked around on the net and got lucky someone had a Sapphire HD3850 512mb agp for sale- 100.00 (used). I have it installed and it seems to be working fine. I get a small green orb once in a while playing 3d graphics games but its rare. Searching around old forums-that seems to be something this particular card is known for. CCC reports 46 deg C. I'm using cat driver 8.9."Do you realise we could all combat global warming by the simple expedient of leaving our refrigerator doors open?"Heh. As the knuckle-heads in office have declared Co2 regs; we should all hold our breath a full 1 hour a day to save on harmful emmisions. All those who fail the requirement should be fined. Future further studies will require all of the discpicable human race be hooked to a breathing device on one end to control Co2 and the other end to control and recycle methane gas. Additionally; not only will fast foods be banned, but also consumption of all manner of bean and bear. "These new measures my fellow sheeples will ensure the continuing growth of green energy markets".Talk about a boring tail gate party. If a human becomes cold, they should wear a blanket woven from sand; if hot, go nude and remove all body hair. If a human wants to fly they  must run as fast as they can whilst flapping their arms wildly, remembering to hold their breath for the required 1 hour of course.:(  jimb