I need a dual Head video Card.
Any clues as to the best model to buy?
Cheers Iain.

Iain - I use a matrox G550. Easy to set up and never had a problem with it.

Cheers Robb.
Iain

A little help on Win 2000 please.

Can anyone (you know who you are :) ) tell me whether a copy of win2000 Pro that was originally distributed with a new Compaq pc, is likely to install on any other PC brand?

I know for example that a similar Dell version works only with Dell.

Thanks very much.

Robb, Thanks for post 168, will have a look

Seymour, if you are still after a TFT screen. Ebuyer.com are doing a Sharp LL-T15G3B 15" in black with a contrast ratio of 350:1 and brightness of 260cd. It'll cost you any extra 35 though.

Neil

Neil / Robber, thanks, I'll take a look. In no great hurry unless I see a bargain!
edit Found the Sharp model you mentioned - looks VERY good. Not worried by the extra 25 - money well spent.

Seymour, have you seen the 17" ones, Now thats what Im after But I need 3 of them :-((

Yes, I'm considering the 17" now, look very good. But times 3, serious money! Just a good day's trading !!! (Not by me I hasten to add)

LOL, I wish

Seymour
Ths Sharp 17" TFT panels are really excellent. I have just bought lots of these in and was so impressed I decided to keep 3 in black for myself! They have very high contrast and brightness with a nice thin frame and built in speakers underneath. Matched with the new Matrox Parhelia graphics card they provide an almost perfect solution for trading & for general home use. The Matrox demonstration software with the coral reef across 3 screens is stunning!

bought new laptop and it has XP but cant get D4F to download any ideas please.

Croc, that's a recommendation and a half! Just have to persuade my business Partner they're essential so I can get the VAT back!

Hi everyone,

I have to agree with Croc regarding the Sharp monitors, even set to the highest resolution they are positively relaxing to look at. The Matrox Parhelia card is quite amazing as well.

I have spent the best part of a day in front of the PC, and by now I would normally be suffering from a bit of Red eye, but there's no such problem with this set up.

Just as an aside, I went out earlier and left the PC on, too lazy to switch off, I set my Tiny persoanl firewall to 'completely cut me off' from the net. On returning, I accidentally hit standby button instead of shut down. I've never put a PC into Standby before so didn't know how to get out of it.

I turned the PC on and then off, it re-booted fine, but the Matrox power desk kept reporting an unexpected error and refused to load. I then set about re-installing the video drivers etc. thinking I'd somehow messed up my settings with the standby business and got myself into a right pickle. Croc came to my resuce by suggesting I use system restore. And of course it worked a treat.

Afterwards I wondered what it was exactly I did to cause the problem in the first place?.... I think it may be that I forgot to switch the firewall to normal mode before shutting down - The Power desk software obviously uses some of the internal ports to communicate with the card or something. Just thought I'd mention it in case someone else has a similar problem.

Good luck everyone for next week.

Regards,

Pete

I have an old tower pc with a perfectly good hard drive in it running on windows 98.
I have a new tower PC operating under XP.
Can I take the hard drive out of the old machine and plug it in the new one as another hard drive.
If so how and do I need to worry about the two different operating sytems?
Regards
M

Martini, shouldn't be a problem, although you've got to make sure that the master/slave jumpers are set correctly on the drive you're installing.

If it was your main drive on the old PC then it will be set for master. It depends if you're going to install it as a master or slave on the new PC. If you've got one hard drive and a CD on your new PC then they're both probably set up as master (your C: drive definitely will be) on the two different cables.

When you come to install it will just go second on one of the chains. Make sure you insert the cables the right way round as well.

Sorry if this is stuff you already know!

There should be no problems with compatibilty beween the two systems as far as I know.

I'll be doing something very similar when my new PC arrives in about a week!

Biffer
Thanks I use PCs I don't ever look inside them so this is all new stuff to me.
Even what you have said is not clear so could you take the time to explain it at an even more basic level.
I presume I am intending to use the old drive as a slave.
Back if the new drive goes belly up and somewhere to have another back up to type of thing.
Regards
M

NB when there is only one drive it is often set not as master or slave but a third setting which you will therefore possibly need to change on both drives.

P.S. we're talking about DIP switches on the disk drives and not about S&M.

K
Slow down please :)
Say that again

OK. Your PC probably has two IDE connections, as they are termed, on the motherboard. On each connection you can place up to two devices, giving you a maximum of four in total. If you only have a single device on a connection then you will probably have a cable with a socket at either end, one plugging into the motherboard and one into the disk drive. If you have two devices on a connection then you will need a cable with three sockets obviously. One end of the cable will have two sockets more close together than the other. That is the end that goes towards the drives.

When there are two devices on a cable then one needs to be set to Master and one to Slave on its jumpers or DIP switches. When there is only one drive on a cable then the DIP switches on it will be set either to Master or to a third setting. You will need to look up the jumper/DIP switch settings on the web if they are not clearly marked on the drive (you might have a manual for the drive of course).

Generally speaking you should try to even out the devices so that any high volume activities are spread across the two IDE connections. So if you just had the two drives you would probably put one on each IDE connection, whereas if you had a tape drive or CD as well then you would have to think which two devices would be more likely to be in use at the same time, and put them on different cables.

Still clear as mud probably :-)